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A Book on Angling | null | 1,867 | A Book on Angling is best described by the author himself in the preface to the first edition: When first infected with the fever of Angling, more years ago than I care to count up, my ambition was to catch every species of freshwater fish, from the minnow up to the salmon, which inhabits our British waters. That satisfied, my next desire was to write a work, which should contain within one volume (as far as might be possible) the fullest and most varied information upon Angling generally, in every branch of the art, which had ever been published; and with this resolve I commenced collecting the matter for the present work nearly twenty years ago. Taken up and laid aside from time to time, little by little it has steadily progressed towards completion. In the course of that twenty years I took occasion to visit and to fish nearly every river of note in the kingdom, my connection with 'The Field' affording me peculiar facilities for obtaining permission to fish very many waters which are closely locked against the general public; and I have roamed England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland over to gather fresh knowledge, and to put it into a practical and concentrated form for the use of my readers. In inducting the tyro into the mysteries of the art, I have endeavored to make every direction and information as clear and practicable as possible. This work is intended to be a useful and not merely a decorative one: thus, the plates are not for the sake of ornamentation, but for direction, and as an aid to the student of tackle-making and fly-tying. Each illustration of tackle is really needed, and the flies shown are not a mere selection of gorgeous and pretty subjects, or I should have chosen very differently; but each fly is a specimen of some separate class of flies, in which a special peculiarity of manufacture is evident. I have to thank many kind friends for assistance in lending tackle and flies as subjects for the engravings, and also for description, as will be found in the body of the work. I have given much time to this book, but I have given it willingly, for it was indeed and in truth a labour of love. Whether the Angling public, to whom I dedicate it (desiring no more potent patron), will appreciate my labours remains to be seen; and so, without further apology if an attempt to supply a long-felt and obvious want, the existence of which few persons have been in a position to know and feel so well as myself, be thought to require an apology into their hands I commit it. FRANCIS FRANCIS. THE FIRS, TWICKENHAM : 1867 |
The Turkey: An American Story | Andrew Smith | 2,006 | The book reveals that turkeys can tell us about cultural issues and reveal something about being American. The book is about the history of turkeys and it has turkey recipes. The history of the bird has to do with such things as turkey bones found in 3700 BC and the domestication of turkeys into Europe by explorers of the New World. The recipes are from the 16th through the 19th century. The book also talks about the efforts to stop the wild turkey from becoming extinct. |
The Silent House | Orhan Pamuk | 1,983 | Behcet Necatigil summarizes the plot of the novel: One of the five narrators of The Silent House, historian Faruk does some research on Ottoman History in an archive in Gebze which is a small town near Istanbul. :::*The novel starts in an old, big and silent house in Cennethisar which is a part of Gebze. The owner of the house is an old, lonely and depressed woman. Fatma Hanim is also called as grandmother and Buyukhanim in the novel. Recep who is a manikin is responsible for everything related to the house such as feeding Buyukhanim, taking her to and from bed, cleaning the house, washing the dishes, doing the shopping for the house are all his job. The three grandchildren of Buyukhanim will come to visit her for a week the next day. All the preparation for their arrival has been made. :::* Fatma Hanim thinks about her grandchildren in her bed at night. She plans how and what she is going to talk to them when they arrive. Then she starts to think of the past. He remembers her late husband Selahattin Bey. Dr. Selahattin Bey is a man of free mind. He does not like the government of Committee of Union and Progress which is a political party. Therefore he is forced to go to an exile in Gebze leaving Istanbul behind. The house where Fatma Hanim lives now has been made in those days in exile. :::*The grandchildren arrives on the day they are supposed to come. The eldest one is Faruk who is a historian. He works as an associate professor at the university. Nilgun is a student of sociology. She is a revolutionist. Metin is a high school student. He dreams of going to America and getting rich there. While they talk, Recep prepares the dinner table. After the dinner, Faruk and Nilgun start a long conversation. Metin goes out and finds his friend Vedat. They join in a group of rich youths. Metin falls in love with a girl in this group whose name is Ceylan. :::*Next morning Fatma Hanima nd her grandchildren go to Selahattin Bey's grave. They pray. Fatma Hanim can't help crying. She is offended by her grandchildren's insensitivity. Faruk starts to do some research in the archive of Gebze District. He starts to examine old newspapers, magazines and court files. He really enjoys it. He aims to shed light on the past of the town. In the evening, they talk about the documents he has worked on during the day. Metin has a lot of fun everyday. Once when he is drunk he tells Ceylan that he loves her but she does not care. :::*After finishing her work at home, Recep goes out at night to walk around. He looks around on the streets by himself. He is concerned about young people's making fun of his being very short. Recep's cousin, Hasan is a right-wing terrorist. He puts on display posters on the walls of the streets with his friends at night. They write slogans defaming communism and socialism. During the day, they exact money from town's artisans. Hasan is a childhood friend of Nilgun and he likes her. Nilgun realizes this but she does not encourage him. She goes to the beach every morning with a book in her hands. She buys a Republican Newspaper on ehr way back home. Hasan follows her and realizes that she is a leftist. he tells about it to his friends. They does not approve Hasan's feeling an interest for such a girl and get angry with him. They make a plan to do something bad to her. Hasan appears in front of Nilgun suddenly while she is going back home to tell her about the plan that his friends make for her. However, Nilgun does not listen to him. She cries out "You, fascist!". Hasan gets very angry with this behavior and beats Nilgun badly on the street and runs away. Recep and the woman from the pharmacy takes Nilgun home. the pharmacy lady tells her that she needs to go to a hospital but she does not want to go. She has bruise all over her body and face. :::* Faruk, Metin and Nilgun talk about what has happened. They decide to go back to Istanbul in the morning. Recep tells their decision to Fatma Hanim in the morning. They will go to say goodbye to her after the breakfast. However, after the breakfast, Nilgun does not feel well and she goes to her room to lie down. She gets worse after a while. Then she dies from cerebral hemorrhage. her brothers are in shock. They don't know what to do. meanwhile, Fatma Hanim waits for them to come upstairs and say goodbye to her. She calls recep but he does not go to upstairs, either. She tries to go downstairs but can't. She lies down on her bed and pulls her cover on her head. The house is in complete silence. Hasan goes to the station and reads the newspaper with fear and curiosity. He checks if there is any news about Nilgun. He leaves from Cennethisar taking a train. |
Feludar Goendagiri | Satyajit Ray | 1,970 | Feluda, Topshe and Topshe's father visit Darjeeling as tourists for a few days. There, Feluda and Topshe meet Rajen Majumdar who was an established advocate based out of Kolkata, but after retirement had settled in Darjeeling. After retirement, Rajen-babu has developed an interest in antiques, and has built quite a formidable collection in a span of a few months. Rajen-babu has been threatened by a letter posted to him, which mentions that he will be punished soon for misdeeds of his past. Rajen-babu panicks and agrees to have Feluda investigate the matter. Feluda and Topshe also meet Tinkori Mukhopadhyay, who is staying at Rajen-babu's house as a paying guest for a few days and Abani Ghoshal, an antique property dealer. Tinkori-babu is a renowned writer of Bengali detective fiction, and he writes fiction under the name Guptochor (i.e. spy). Feluda mentions that Tinkori-babu is one of his favourite writers of detective stories in Bengali. Abani Ghoshal is interested in buying a bell, supposed to belong to the head-Lama of a nearby monastery, that is in Rajen-babu's possession. Amongst other things, Feluda notices that the letter that was mailed to Rajen-babu is created out of words cut out from a newspaper. Tinkori Mukhopadhyay helps Feluda in his investigation, by suggesting that the cuttings are from Anandabazar Patrika, recognizing the unique font used in that newspaper. Later, Feluda also meets Prabir Majumdar, Rajen Majumdar's estranged son. He was thrown out of the house by Rajen-babu for trying to steal money. Feluda also gives a visit to Dr. Phani Mitter, Rajen-babu's physician. A second incident happens a following night. A man wearing a ghostly mask had entered Rajen-babu's room at night. Rajen-babu is extremely scared and agrees to Feluda and Topshe staying the night over at their place the next day. Later, by a process of elimination, Feluda gets to the root of the problem. And his inference is confirmed by the smell of cheroots in one of the masks in Rajen-babu's collection of Antiques. The only person in the vicinity who smoked the specific brand and smell of cheroots is Tinkori-babu. Tinkori-babu, though, had left for Kolkata a day ago. It is later confirmed that it is indeed Tinkori-babu who is the real culprit. Tinkori-babu has left a letter to Rajen-babu, referring to him as Raju, apparently Rajen-babu's nickname. Tinkori-babu was Rajen-babu's classmate in Bankura Missionary school, and was unlawfully, and seriously injured by Rajen-babu during a 100-yard race at the school's annual sports festival. Since Rajen-babu had left Bankura after the incident, Tinkori-babu never got a chance to avenge the incident then. After arriving at Darjeeling, Tinkori-babu could identify his old adversary from school from an old photograph, and decided to avenge that old incident by putting Rajen-babu under some discomfort. Thus, he sent the threatening letter, and also scared Rajen-babu at midnight in Rajen-babu's bedroom wearing the mask. |
The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract | null | null | The central theme is that the notion of a contract based on consent (or a "meeting of minds") was almost entirely absent before 1800 in the law. Instead it was based on reliance or the receipt of a benefit. You could revoke a promise, and the concept of an executory contract was unknown. Moreover, courts were more concerned with the fairness of an exchange, and not concerned merely to uphold promises or the parties' will. Damages reflected that, only being for the value of exchange, not the loss of a bargain. Then, after 1800, the concept of contractual freedom "rose". Promises and the "intentions" of parties "became the paradigm of contract theory." Atiyah argues that it began with the notion of freedom of property, summed up in the phrase of Sir Edward Coke in Semayne's case that every man's home is his castle. Following that was the transition from a property to a contract based society. After 1900, however, freedom of contract had had its heyday. Atiyah illustrates how the growth of consumer protection, rent and employment legislation has moved contract back into smaller confines, based on general notions of fairness. |
Blue Moon Rising | Simon Green | null | Rupert's quest is to slay a dragon, proving his worth to the kingdom; however Rupert knows he has been sent to die. He stubbornly refuses to run away and proceeds with the undertaking. Rupert seeks out the notorious Night Witch who, upon finding out he is the grandson of her long dead lover provides him with a map to find a dragon. To get to his destination Rupert must pass through the Darkwood, an area in the forest where no light ever penetrates, where nothing lives except demons. Passing through the endless night Rupert is attacked by countless demons which appear to be hunting in packs though demons have never hunted in packs before. After reaching the other side of the Darkwood Rupert discovers a dragon in a cave at the top of a mountain and upon challenging him is surprised to find that not only does the dragon not have any interest in killing him, it collects butterflies. Also in the cave is Princess Julia, a seventh daughter from the Hillsdown province who was sent to the dragon as a sacrifice but which the dragon does "not have the heart" to kill. Rupert, his Unicorn, Princess Julia and the Dragon set out back towards the Forest Castle but have to pass through the Darkwood again. Rupert can hardly bring himself to face the endless night of that experience again but knowing he must, they press on. Near the completion of this second passing of the Darkwood the group are attacked by hordes of demons. The dragon offers some of the last of his strength to enable Rupert to obtain the Rainbow Sword which banishes the darkness from them and heals their wounds. The group are able to make it back to Forest Castle only to find that the Darkwood is spreading and the castle guard has been vastly depleted in defending the outlying towns and villages from the encroaching Darkwood. Rupert is sent back out with a company of guards to travel through the Darkwood again in search of the High Warlock. |
Back | Henry Green | 1,946 | The novel tells the story of Charley Summers, a young Englishman who comes back from Germany, where he was detained as a POW for three years after having been wounded in combat in France (possibly in 1939-1940). Summers is repatriated because, due to his wound, his leg had to be amputated. While he was prisoner, Rose, the woman he loved, died, and this adds to the shock Charley suffered because of the mutilation. Moroever, Rose was married to another man, so Charley cannot even express his bereavement for fear of scandal. After having visited the grave of Rose and met her husband James there, Charley calls on Rose's father, Mr Grant, who encourages him to make acquantance with a young widow. Charley ignores the suggestion at first, but after some days he goes to the widow's flat and he is astonished at the uncanny resemblance between the woman, whose name is Nancy Whitmore, and Rose. He soon finds out that there is a very simple explanation for this: Nancy is the illegitimate daughter of Mr Grant, who sent Charley to her thinking he might console her of the death of her husband (an RAF pilot killed in action in Egypt). The rest of the novel describes the complex and troubled relation between Charley and Nancy, as it unfolds against the background of a war-torn Britain. |
The Sable Quean | Brian Jacques | 2,010 | This book contains the second instance of a creature other than a badger succumbing to the Blood Wrath, the first instance being in the book Mattimeo when Matthias is rescuing his son, Mattimeo. Buckler Kordyne, a Long Patrol hare, has a discussion with Brang Forgefire, Badger Lord of Salamandastron. Buckler is bored with mountain life, so Brang suggests that he visits Redwall Abbey to deliver some new bellropes to the Abbess (Brang had accidentally broken the ropes last time he was there); while Buckler visits the Abbey, he can also visit his brother on his farm, which is nearby. Buckler agrees, taking along with him his gluttonous friend, Subaltern Diggs. At Redwall, a music contest for Bard of Redwall is being organized, however two Dibbuns disappear in the process. The duo, a molebabe and a squirrelmaid, had wandered outside to the woodlands to picnic, but a waiting band of vermin Ravagers bound, gagged, and carried them off before anyone could notice their absence. One of the Ravagers, Globby, is overcome by the temptation of Redwall food and attempts to break inside the kitchens; however, he is captured by Skipper Ruark, who punishes the miscreant by forcing him to clean up the mess he had made by his burglary. In the hue and cry raised when the two Dibbuns were discovered missing, Globby escapes the kitchens and flees to the attics, using a pilfered kitchen knife as a weapon. In the attempt to recapture and interrogate him, both he and Brother Tollum are slain. In Mossflower Woods, Buckler and Diggs hear two vermin from the Ravager horde trying to capture a shrewmaid. Diggs knocks the vermin unconscious, and the two hares sit down to eat, ignoring the shrew because of her ingratitude. After she finally relents, and shares food with them, Buckler deals with the two vermin, who have been making protests. Not heeding his advice, they return later with some of their Ravager buddies to spy on the group. Flib, Diggs, and Buckler join forces with a musical traveling group of Hedgehogs, voles, and moles, who are also on their way to Redwall. When Flib and two of the younger hedgehogs sleep outside the performing company's raft, on the riverbank, they are captured by the Ravagers. As it turns out, many young ones have been captured by the Ravagers, led by Zwilt the Shade and Vilaya, both evil sables. They are keeping the hostages in the remains of Brockhall, which they have renamed Althier, and are planning to use the captives to force Redwall to surrender to their demands. Several of the captive young ones, led by Flandor the otter, Tura the squirrel, and Flib's sister Midda, try without success to figure out a workable escape plan. Many of the young ones are in despair, and would rather concentrate on where their next meal is coming from than ways to get out. Meeting up with the Guosim, led by Flib's father Jango Bigboat, the two hares and the performing company proceed to Redwall. Abbess Marjoram discusses the position with Buckler and several others, who agree to lead a force into Mossflower to search for the young ones. The first search attempt yields the Redwallers with one Ravager captive, and Buckler's badly wounded and almost delirious sister-in-law Clarinna. She informs Buckler that his brother Clerun was brutally slain by Zwilt the Shade, and that his nephew and niece have been taken by the Ravagers. Before Buckler and his searchers can set out again, the Ravagers, led by Vilaya and Zwilt, show up in force at Redwall, and make their demands for surrender. Diggs attempts to use his vermin captive, Gripchun, as a hostage to turn the tables, but Zwilt merely has the unfortunate shot with arrows. The Ravagers then retreat, saying they will return, and that the Redwallers should prepare to surrender to them. Meanwhile, in Vilaya and Zwilt's absence, Flib has roused the captive Dibbuns and young ones into digging an escape tunnel in secret. She and the two inexperienced moles helping her to dig cause a cave in, which collapses part of the prison chamber and traps the trio in the landslide. Fortunately for Flib, Gurchen, and Guffy, a warrior mole called Axtel happens across the remains of their tunnel and digs them out. After hearing Flib recount the position the other babes are in, Axtel leaves her a spear and instructs her to watch over the two molebabes, while he digs back into Althier to get the rest. Soon after he leaves, Flib encounters two fox Ravagers, but slays one with the spear and runs the other off with a whip. A kind watervole, Mumzy, who has been watching and knows there are other Ravagers about, moves the trio of young ones from Axtel's campsite to her concealed bankside home nearby. By now, Vilaya has returned, and ordered the young ones to be moved to another prison cave on the other side of Althier; this one has rock walls instead of dirt, and cannot be dug out of easily. She tries to torture an infant squirrel into revealing the information about the tunnel, but soon finds herself badly beaten by Flandor, who damages her eye with his rudder. In rage, the Sable Quean stabs the young otter with a poisoned blade she wears in a phial about her neck, slaying him. She then sends Zwilt and some Ravagers out to hunt for the escapees, and the prison guards, who have deserted. Axtel, digging his way into Althier, barges into the new prison cave, taking Tassy and Borti with him. The Ravagers, stopping the other babes from escaping, wound the warrior mole badly by stabbing him through the footpaw, but he manages to limp away with the two babes, blocking his escape route with a boulder so as not to be followed. Tassy tries to help heal his footpaw. Upon emerging into the woodlands, the trio find Buckler and the search party from Redwall, who have set out again. They also meet up with Mumzy, who leads them to her home and the other three escaped young ones. Back in Althier, an infant mouse quite accidentally discovers a hidden rift in the rock, which leads to a natural cave system behind the wall. Seizing the opportunity, the entire pack of young ones, now led by Midda and Tura, flee down the tunnel, blocking the rift with soil and rocks behind them. Vilaya soon discovers the absence of her prisoners; killing the stoat who was supposed to be on guard duty, she orders the Ravagers to unblock the rift and get after the young ones. Zwilt returns to Althier then, and demands to know what is going on. The ensuing argument causes a rift between the two sables, who split forces when they manage to enter the caves; Zwilt takes a group in one direction, while Vilaya takes hers in the other. Vilaya, now knowing she cannot trust Zwilt, sends her old rat confidant to spy on him. Zwilt, however, has other plans; he orders one of his biggest soldiers to strangle the helpless rat before she can report back to Vilaya. This action, once Vilaya hears of it, causes the two sables to become deadly enemies. Buckler, meanwhile, has taken the entire Guosim force and most of the able-bodied creatures from Redwall, planning to storm Althier, as they now know its location thanks to Axtel. Unfortunately, by the time they get there, both the young ones and the Ravagers have gotten far down the tunnels, leaving no sign as to where they have gone. The group searches Althier from end to end with no success; During the search, Diggs becomes separated from the rest and is soon lost in Mossflower. Vilaya and her force catch up with Zwilt's, who have not succeeded in finding the runaways. The two sables battle, and Zwilt stabs Vilaya with his broadsword; she falls unconscious with the pain. Thinking Vilaya is dead, Zwilt prepares to cut off her head as a warning to other vermin, but one of the Ravager stoats urges him not to, saying it would be a bad omen. As the other Ravagers march off to make war on Redwall, Gliv is left behind with instructions to bury Vilaya; however, knowing that the Sable Quean is still alive, she nurses her back to health, and instructs her to follow Zwilt and slay him. Vilaya cruelly repays her rescuer by slaying her with the poisoned dagger, deciding that she can better do the job alone. The escapees by now have reached the surface; but their freedom is short-lived, as the insane hedghog Triggut Frap imprisons them on his pike-surrounded watermeadow island, intending to use them as slaves to build him a proper house. Fortunately for the captives, Diggs arrives, along with a huge badger lady Ambrevina Rockflash that met up with him on the way. Ambrevina was a friend of the young otter Flandor, and is seeking his whereabouts. When Midda informs her of his murder by Vilaya, the badger swears to avenge him. Leaving the young ones in Mumzy's care, Diggs and Ambrevina return to Redwall, as Buckler and the other group did upon hearing that Zwilt and the Ravagers were headed there. They join in the battle against the Ravagers' battering ram at the front gate, not knowing that Zwilt and four of his soldiers are attempting to force a secret entrance from the back. After the battering ram plot is foiled, a prolonged siege ensues. Diggs, relieved of guard duty, heads off to the kitchens to find a bite to eat. What he ends up finding is Zwilt, who has just managed to get in. Badly wounding the young hare, and causing Diggs to lose his ear and his memory in the process, the sable flees into Great Hall, but encounters Abbess Marjoram, Clarinna, and several other Abbey females. Before he and his four soldiers can do any harm, Buckler appears on the scene. In the fantastic sword duel that ensues, Zwilt realizes he has finally met a beast who is more than his match. Taking a nearby Dibbun hostage, he commands the young hare to surrender; offering to give his life for the babe, Buckler does. Having his soldiers pin the young hare to the stairs, Zwilt attempts to behead him. However Clarinna comes up behind him and runs him through with the Sword of Martin, which had been hanging on the wall nearby. Clarinna tells Buckler when he offered to give his life he did something far braver than slaying Zwilt. The four soldiers flee, but do not escape, as a Bloodwrath-possessed Axtel takes care of them once and for all. Meanwhile, outside the Abbey walls, Vilaya has resumed control of the Ravagers; the Redwallers, however, with the aid of Ambrevina and the Guosim, soundly rout the vermin, forcing the remainder into a scattered retreat. Vilaya flees, alone, but Ambrevina follows her, intent on avenging Flandor. Just as she catches up with Vilaya, the sable trips the badger with her cloak, hoping to throw her off. This proves to be her undoing, as Ambrevina falls right on top of the Sable Quean; the force causes the poison phial necklace to break, the shards piercing Vilaya and slaying her. Weeping for Flandor, Ambrevina returns to Redwall. Diggs, who has completely forgotten who he is and now believes himself to be a captain in the Long Patrol, wanders away from the Abbey, but returns in company with Mumzy and the freed captives. After having his memory restored by a friend's hitting him hard on the head, Diggs, in company with Buckler and Ambrevina, returns to Salamandastron. The two young hares then report to Lord Brang the adventurous outcome of their little 'visit' to Redwall. |
Icarus at the Edge of Time | Brian Greene | 2,008 | The book is a science fiction retelling of Icarus' tale. It is about a young man who runs away from his traveling, deep-space home to explore a black hole. |
The Odd Egg | null | null | An odd duck finds an old egg. He is jealous of mother birds having eggs. So he adopts the big egg that has green spots that matches his feathers. The other birds make fun of him about it. When each egg breaks open, only the odd duck's egg remains. The egg hatches later and it is an alligator. The alligator acts like a duck. |
Cathedral of the sea | Ildefonso Falcones | 2,006 | The book is set in Barcelona and its main character is Arnau Estanyol, the son of a fugitive serf who obtains freedom and eventually achieves a high status. |
Blacker's Art of Fly Making | null | 1,842 | Blacker's Art Fly Making is best described by the author himself in the preface to the second edition (1855): I know not how to apologise for submitting a Second Edition of this little Book to the notice of the Angling few, after the appearance of so many by clever writers, except the many calls I had for It, and a sincere desire of improving farther upon a craft that has not hitherto been clearly promulgated by a real practitioner; consequently my great object is to benefit and amuse my readers, by giving them something practical, which at the present time may be particularly wanted by those who love to make their own flies, whose wants, without doubt, will be found sufficiently supplied in this book; the tyro will appreciate it as valuable to him, and the senior angler who may, perchance, be in possession of it, and who may be singularly fond of making his flies, and amusing himself dyeing the hackles and colours, &c., will, I am persuaded, consider it a treasure. My endeavours have been unceasing for many years past, in striving to please the great Salmon Fishers and Trout Fishers of this Country, and I must confess that my labours have not been in vain; they have generously conferred upon me their very kind patronage and good will, benefits for which I hold them in very great estimation. Under these circumstances, I have taken much pains to write the book in a befitting manner to suit their tastes and purposes, although my inability in many instances has been an obstacle, nevertheless with all my faults I claim the title of Fisherman, an humble and unimportuned name which no reasonable dispensation can deprive me of. From my boyhood, I took great delight in ranging along the banks of the beautiful and romantic streams of my native land, Ireland; and having also been for many years a skilful Fly Fisher of no little commendation, in both Great Britain and Hibernia, it is my desire to impart to the world, plainly and easily, the knowledge I have acquired, that all those who wish to become masters of the art, may, by patience and practice, and a close adherence to the instructions I shall lay down, derive the fullest benefit from my experience. I have endeavoured in the following treatise on Fly-making, to divest the subject, as far as possible, of all technicalities and superfluities; at the same time, I have entered into such full details in the construction of the Fly, that by adopting the process I have pointed out, and following the instructions I have given, the aspirants to the art of Fly-making may speedily become proficients. In this little book there will be found nothing imaginary, but it is purely written from the practice of angling, so that I may without scruple, justly entitle it The Art of Fly-making, Angling, and Dyeing of Colours. It is also interspersed with many useful remarks that will no doubt agreeably entertain my readers. No man has taken such pains to improve upon the angler's craft as I; on every article in the whole range of fishing tackle I have made some improvement on rods, flies, lines, reels, and tackle of every sort; and in these pages have left a lasting memorial of my handicraft to the fly-fisher, from whom I have hidden nothing that might retard him in his progress, and who will appreciate it for the great deal of matter propounded in little compass to prevent incumbrance; that the lovers of fly fishing, which has superior claims, may have an opportunity of keeping it in their side pocket,—to be convenient and handy when on their piscatory excursions, the exercise and variety of which will be found advantageous to the health, and the calming of the mind—things not to be purchased; enjoying at the same time the harmonious notes of the warblers of the grove, and musing upon the diversity of the prospects around, while straying along the beautiful streams and vallies of this delightful country. The list of flies I have given, will be found very valuable, and the tyro will take great delight in imitating these flies necessary for use, and suiting the colours exactly to each, keeping to their symmetrical forms as they appear with his light materials. This beautiful branch of fly-making, peculiarly my own, cannot fail to perfect the angler who is scientific and ingenious, the result of which will be never-failing success. I have added to the art of fly-making full instructions, and the most approved receipts for dyeing mohair, pighair, feathers, and other materials most useful and appropriate for imitating the natural flies and stuffs the most killing for Trout and Salmon; and which will retain their brilliancy through all the vicissitudes to which they may be exposed. To bring the Engravings of the flies to the greatest perfection, I have stood at the elbow of the artist who executed this part of the work, that they might be turned out exact to my own models, which renders them and the descriptions more intelligible, as the shade in the fibre of each feather is shown in the plate, in the clearest and finest manner imaginable, that it may be properly seen how these artificial flies are constructed,—the resemblance of those beautiful ones, the productions of the Great Author of Nature, that Trout and Salmon do love to feed upon. I have also given the principal rivers of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, with the flies best adapted to each, which will enable the fisher to have all things in readiness on his arrival at their localities, and sally out on the finny tribe fearless of disappointment; and for the younger branch of anglers, I have shown the various sorts of fish, with the tackle and baits best adapted to catch them. The catechism of fly making which I have introduced will be found very curious and instructive to the young beginner, and will afford him every opportunity of retaining the whole process, that when rehearsed in the mind, and perfectly understood, he may apply, with more certain facility, the hand to both material and hook. Published by the Author, WILLIAM BLACKER, At 54, Dean Street Soho, 1855. |
Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food | null | null | At the beginning of the book the author says, "I used to eat chicken without much thought about where it came from, or how and by whom it was raised and processed. Life was much easier then." The book examines the chicken industry of the United States. The book is divided into two parts. The first part talks about the production and consumption of chicken. The second part talks about the workers participation in the production. The chicken industry has grown since World War II. The chicken industry is competitive and has disturbing labor strategies. |
Mister Johnson | Joyce Cary | 1,939 | Johnson, a young African, is assigned as clerk at a British district office in Fada, Nigeria. He is from a different district and is regarded as a foreigner by those native to the area. Johnson works his way into local society, marrying there, but never really fitting in. At the same time, he has difficulties in adjusting to the regulations and mechanism of the district office and his official duties. The district officer, Rudbeck, meanwhile, is dissatisfied with his work in the service and his life in Africa. Rudbeck conceives the notion that a road linking Fada to the main highway and larger population centers will be of great benefit to the region. Johnson, as Rudbeck's clerk, also becomes enthused about this project. Johnson is one of Cary's joy-filled characters, possessor of a great energy that infects all around him. People are drawn to Johnson and follow him without realizing that they are being led. Indeed, Johnson has no clear idea of where he is going. His delight is in seeing those around him happy. His mood infects Rudbeck and, when Johnson suggests how the books may be fiddled to support Rudbeck's road project, the colonial officer is seduced. But Rudbeck's swindle is uncovered and he returns to England to be with his wife. Johnson now goes to work for Gollup, a retired British sergeant who has married a native woman and runs the local store. Gollup is an abusive drunk given to racist epithets, but he admires Johnson's good-humored courage in facing up to his words and blows. Johnson, in turn, enjoys the compliment to his courage and, when Gollup next attacks him, retaliates. Gollup does not take this kind of violence seriously and thinks no less of Johnson, but he cannot have an employee who has struck him in public. Johnson is let go and leaves Fada. Meanwhile, a shortage of political officers means that Rudbeck must return. He immediately recommences his road-building. Rudbeck and his superior work out the extent to which he can finagle road-building funds from the accounts, but the older man warns Rudbeck that another scandal will destroy his career. The road-building brings Johnson back to Fada. Rudbeck hires him again and Johnson's infectious enthusiasm makes the road-building successful. But Rudbeck discovers that Johnson has been engaged in petty graft and dismisses him. Johnson turns to theft from the store to support his lifestyle and, when Gollup discovers him, kills the storekeeper. Now Rudbeck must try Johnson for murder. The trial brings Rudbeck to the breaking point. Johnson is found guilty and begs Rudbeck to keep him from the gallows by killing him. Rudbeck follows his heart rather than the rules and does so, though the act will destroy his career and possibly have other ramifications, legal and personal, that lie beyond the close of the novel. |
The Zoya Factor | null | null | Zoya Solanki is a client service rep with an advertising agency, who loves everything about her job especially the brand she has been put in charge of – Zing Cola (Pepsi in a fictional avatar). But when she’s made to leave an ad film shoot, featuring none other than Shah Rukh Khan, and has to go to Dhaka to shoot an add with the Indian cricket team she begins to experience her first pangs of irritation towards the brand(Zing). Making matters somewhat worse, the team captain Nikhil Khoda insists on discipline as a norm and cuts her important shoot short. This causes her to stay back a few more days than anticipated and miss the Shah Rukh Khan film shoot. When the men in blue realise that Zoya was born at the very moment India won the first and the only cricket World Cup in 1983, they are appaled. What intrigues them more was when they realised that having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, and when not eating with her results in defeat. They decide she is a lucky charm. As luck would have it, the rag tag team had a sudden spurt of victories and soon the cricket-crazy nation declares her a goddess. Soon, Zoya is invited by the eccentric IBCC (stands for Indian Board of Cricket Control, and is a spoof on BCCI, Board of Control for Cricket in India) president to accompany the team to the ICC World Cup in Australia. Pursued by international cricket boards on the one hand, wooed by cola majors on the other, Zoya struggles to stay grounded in the thick of the World Cup action. And it doesn't help that she keeps clashing with the erratically brilliant new Indian skipper, who tells her flatly that he doesn't believe in luck. What follows is a love-hate relationship; attraction and antagonism. Zoya is luck personified and she never ceases to be the lucky charm for the men-in-blue. |
The Unforgiving Wind | John Harris | 1,963 | An expedition is planned by Commander Adams across the Arctic. While in the Arctic, a storm wreaks havoc in the expedition. Most of the equipment including the radio is damaged. The team is finally able to find a base to stay with limited supplies. Storm, snow, ice, subzero temperatures all make living difficult. The team has to winter in the base with limited supplies. The winter is one long night that is 6 months long. Rescuers were not able to reach them because of ice formed in the sea during winter. Since the team lost contact everybody in mainland believes them to be dead because nobody will be able to survive a winter in the Arctic unsheltered. The team manages to survive because they were able to find a shelter, however they are half starved and health and sanity is on the fall. The team strongly believes Tom Fife will come with a search party to rescue them, however this is next to impossible for Tom Fife because everybody believes that all the team are dead. He is the only one who hopes to find them alive. He has to undertake tremendous personal strain, including losing his job, to force people to undertake the rescue mission. There is only a small window to do this rescue, as the ice will solidify making rescue impossible after summer. The team will not be able to survive another winter in the Arctic. |
The Aesthetic Dimension | Herbert Marcuse | 1,977 | The Aesthetic Dimension (not to be confused with a chapter from Marcuse's Eros and Civilization of the same name) is a response to previous writings within critical theory on the subject of art, notably those of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Marcuse rejects Benjamin's call in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" for the politicization (i.e., a literal reflection of perceived political realities) of modern, reproducible art to both reflect the state of a society and incite change. Like both Benjamin and Adorno, Marcuse feels that art promises resistance to societal repression, and that a cultural revolution is necessarily connected to a political and/or social revolution. Adorno (as represented mainly by his posthumous Aesthetic Theory) and Marcuse agree that this possibility must be realized through artistic detachment and symbolism, but Marcuse offers a more inclusive and less radical suggestion for modern art's source of power than does Adorno, who believes the works of high culture to be the sole source of potential artistic emancipation. Marcuse instead points to what he perceives to be the successes of high culture and translates these to all areas of art. For Marcuse, art's promise of transcendence can only be fulfilled via a conceptual independence from society, but this independence is accessible through a host of media. The successful artist will attain truth in his work through detachment that results in symbolic representation. This successful art must necessarily invoke a longing for something utopian and the promise of ultimate happiness represented by beauty. This symbolic longing for fulfillment will awaken us from complacency. Marcuse states in the book's introduction that he considers literature the primary source of his influence for this system, but feels that the ideas would apply to music and plastic arts as well. |
The Man-Eater | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,955 | Jefferson Scott, Jr. and Robert Gordon, hunters in the Belgian Congo, are thrown together with missionaries Sangamon and Mary Morton and their daughter Ruth. Scott marries Ruth, and Gordon is entrusted with stock certificates to be taken back to Scott's father in America. Later Scott and the elder Mortons are killed by the native Wakandas; Ruth and her daughter Virginia are saved by Belgian forces and afterwards return to America to live with Scott's father. The stock certificates, meanwhile, have gone astray, with only a single sheet of paper having been delivered to the elder Scott. Nineteen years pass. On the death of Jefferson Scott, Sr., Virginia Scott is to inherit the estate, but the will cannot be located, and Scott Taylor, her grandfather’s disinherited nephew, appears to claim a half share. Proposing to Virginia in an effort to obtain it all, he is rebuffed, whereupon he disputes her right to any of the estate, pretending she is illegitimate. Ruth attempts to prove her marriage to Virginia's father by writing to Robert Gordon, who witnessed the ceremony, but he is now deceased. Her appeal reaches his son Dick Gordon instead. Moved but unable to provide the desired proof, Gordon writes back of his intention to sail to Africa to seek documentation of the marriage there. Taylor intercepts the letter and follows him with the intention of murder. Discovering this, Virginia also sets out for Africa. Gordon reaches the ruins of the old mission and finds there a sealed envelope, with which he begins his trek back to the coast. Taylor and his confederates Kelley and Gootch await him in ambush in a native village. They kill a lioness, whose mate the natives take captive in a pit trap. Virginia arrives at the village and is imprisoned by the villains. Meanwhile, Gordon discovers and frees the captured lion, which then returns to the village seeking the killers of its mate. The lion arrives just as the villains are about to rape and kill Virginia, and kills Gootch while others flee. Virginia escapes but is stalked by a hyena. Gordon, who happens to be nearby, hears her scream and shoots the beast. She warns him against Taylor, who then appears with Kelley, seeking her. Seizing Gordon’s gun, she wounds Taylor and drives the villains off. They return to America and separate, Gordon somehow neglecting to give her the envelope. Meanwhile, the lion has been captured by hunters and sold to an itinerant American circus, in which he is billed as "Ben, King of Beasts, the Man-Eating Lion." Realizing his omission, Gordon visits the Scott home to deliver the envelope to Virginia and Ruth, unaware that Taylor and Kelley have returned from Africa and still plan to kill him. He finds the Scotts absent from home, their return delayed by a train wreck. Ben, who was also on the train, is freed by the wreck and turns up at the house, where he detects the scents of both his rescuer Gordon and the two villains. Encountering the latter, he kills Kelley and pursues Taylor to Gordons room. There Taylor struggles with Gordon and overcomes him, taking the envelope before fleeing from Ben. The lion follows, overtaking and killing Taylor within sight of the returning Scott's. Gordon, pursuing Taylor, recognizes Ben and protects him from the armed party that arrives to kill the escaped lion. He buys Ben from the circus, intending to give him a new home in a zoo. The mysterious envelope, finally opened, proves to contain the long lost stocks, not the hoped for marriage certificate. The latter turns up, together with the missing will, in a cupboard in the Scott house, having been secreted there by Jefferson Scott, Sr. The certificate was evidently the paper Gordon's father had delivered to the elder Scott instead of the stocks. Dick Gordon and Virginia Scott declare their love for each other and decide to marry. |
The Dreadful Lemon Sky | John D. MacDonald | 1,975 | Carrie, an old friend of the hero, Travis McGee, arrives at his houseboat, the Busted Flush. She has a suitcase full of suspicious money. Carrie asks Travis to keep it safe for her for two weeks and to send it to her sister if she does not return in two weeks. For his troubles, McGee can keep 10,000 worth. A fortnight passes and Carrie doesn't return. McGee investigates and learns she died in a traffic accident but he believes she has been murdered. His investigation leads him to an apartment complex full of singles presided over by a landlord called 'Big Daddy'. He also meets the newly widowed 'Cindy Birdsong', who becomes his new romantic interest. |
The Test | Mary Tappan Wright | 1,904 | The story takes place in the college town of Genoa in the Middle West. The heroine, Alice Lindell, secretary to Senator Winchester, is engaged to the senator's son Tom. She attempts to wean Tom away from his weakness for liquor by prematurely giving in to his desire for her, with disastrous results; Tom backslides, and while drunk falls victim to the wiles of another admirer, the unscrupulous Harriet, who marries him. Repenting his folly, he resolves to leave Harriet and run away with Alice, but is persuaded by the latter to fulfill his marriage vows and henceforth conduct himself honorably. Alice courageously faces the shame of bearing and rearing their illegitimate daughter Anna alone. This ordeal is the test of the title—of herself, her family, and her community. Her story is paralleled in a subplot involving Sallie, a sinner of a lower sort. Over the years Alice is supported by some, notably the senator, but vilified by most of the small-minded townsfolk, including her own mother. Her sister Gertrude, engaged to the priggish clergyman John Prescott, also suffers, her intended suddenly developing cold feet at the news of Alice's indiscretion. Perhaps the height of Alice's suffering is reached when Harriet, having lost her own child, importunes her to let her have Anna instead; persuaded it would be in the best interest of her daughter, Alice finally complies. In time her enduring patience effects her moral recovery in the eyes of the town, and her example succeeds in inspiring Tom to complete his own personal regeneration. In the conclusion Harriet's death frees them to marry each other, and the two depart Genoa to begin a new life together. |
The Cow Who Clucked | null | null | A cow loses her moo and clucks after she dreams that she was a mother hen. So she spends the day searching for her missing moo. When the cow asks each farm animal if they have seen her moo, the animals response varies such as "maa, maa" and "quack quack". |
The Last Olympian | Rick Riordan | 2,009 | In order to try to head off Kronos' approach by sea, Percy and Beckendorf attempt to destroy his ship, the Princess Andromeda. However, Kronos, still possessing Luke Castellan, is not caught off guard, and Beckendorf sacrifices his life to destroy the ship, while Percy dives overboard and passes out from contact with Kronos' scythe when battling him on the ship. Percy is awakened by his half-brother Tyson, the cyclops. He finds that he is in his father Poseidon's underwater palace, which is under siege by the forces of the Titan Oceanus. Percy wants to stay and help fight with his father, but Poseidon sends Percy back to Camp Half-Blood. At Camp Half-Blood, Chiron decides it is time for Percy to hear the "Great Prophecy." Percy informs the camp that there is a spy among them, someone who has been informing the Titans for years, but they put it aside until the bigger issues at hand are dealt with, such as the impending war against Kronos. Soon after arriving, Percy leaves again with Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, to find out Nico's plan for Percy to survive the battle, as mentioned at the end of The Battle of the Labyrinth. After visiting Luke's mother in Westport, Connecticut, and talking with Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home, Percy procures a blessing from his mother, which will allow him to descend into the Underworld for the second time. Here, Nico betrays Percy for information on his past, but then helps Percy to escape from confinement. The two boys then follow through with the original plan, which was for Percy to bathe in the River Styx and gain Achilles' power. Percy emerges from the Underworld in New York City, leaving Nico behind. Percy calls Annabeth and tells her it's time for the battle to begin. The campers, alongside Chiron, arrive and Percy organizes them (minus the Ares cabin, who refused to fight), and prepares them for an urban battle. They enter Olympus through the Empire State Building to prepare and meet Hermes, who is furious with Annabeth. He believes that she could have stopped the war by helping Luke before he was possessed, saying he would have listened to her. Before the battle begins, New York City is silenced by way of a powerful sleeping spell from Morpheus, the god of dreams, that puts all mortals to sleep. Despite being joined by the Hunters of Artemis; satyrs; naiads; dryads and other tree nymphs; Chiron's centaur cousins the Party Ponies, automatons fashioned by the late Daedalus; and the hellhound Mrs. O'Leary; Percy's forces are consistently forced back by sheer numbers. Kronos is not without losses, as Percy buffets the Titan Lord's brother, Hyperion, into submission, from where Grover's nature powers encase the Titan of the East in a massive maple tree. Annabeth is badly injured when she saves Percy from a blade thrown by Ethan, son of Nemesis, that would have hit Percy in his Achilles point and would have most likely been a fatal injury. Percy tells Annabeth this, informing her that his weak spot is the small of his back. Upon falling asleep, Percy has dreams of Kronos questioning Ethan about where Percy's Achilles spot was, but Ethan doesn't know. Rachel, a mortal who can see through the Mist, flies from a family island vacation to New York to tell Percy that he is not the hero of the Great Prophecy, and that it will influence his choice when he turns 16. More than that, she doesn't know who the hero mentioned in the Great Prophecy is. She also informs Percy that the Titans have a monster on their side that only a child of Ares could destroy, but the Ares cabin remains at camp. The monster arrives, and the campers learn that it is a drakon, a monster similar to, but more destructive than, a dragon. Right when all hope seems lost, an unknown camper posing as Clarisse tries to slaughter it but is badly wounded. The real Clarisse arrives on a flying chariot and kills the drakon by herself. The campers find out that the first "Clarisse" was Silena. She admits that she pretended to be Clarisse because that was the only way she could convince the rest of the Ares cabin to come and fight. With her last few breaths, Silena confesses she was the spy all along. She dies a hero, and not a traitor. Driven back to the blocks surrounding the Empire State building, Percy and his friends fight in a last stand to protect Mount Olympus from the massive army Kronos has amassed. Even when Hades arrives with his army, Kronos still manages to break through and enter Olympus. Percy and Kronos, in Luke's body, battle in the throne room of Olympus, without either side gaining a significant advantage. Ethan rebels against Kronos at the last minute, trying to kill him, but his sword ricochets back into his stomach. With his dying breath, he tells Percy that minor gods deserve better before falling into a fissure created by Kronos. Luke is shocked back into his non-evil self when Annabeth helps him remember his promise of family to her when he brutally smashes her across the throne room. The Great Prophecy hinges on Percy's decision to give Luke Annabeth's dagger rather than attempt to kill Luke himself. Luke injures himself at his mortal point (under his left armpit) and uses all his power in one strike on Kronos. With his dying breaths, Luke tells Percy that the minor gods should also have cabins at Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth tells Luke that she loved him as a brother, but Percy was the one she had always and truly loved. Luke sacrifices himself for Olympus and becomes the hero of the prophecy. Percy becomes the half-blood of the prophecy that would "reach sixteen against all odds," ending the war on the dawn of his 16th birthday. With Poseidon ambushing Typhon at the Hudson River, the Olympians manage to defeat him. Returning to the throne room, they grant Percy, Grover, Annabeth, Thalia, and Tyson rewards at the conclusion of their various quests. Percy, refusing godhood for himself, forces the gods to swear on the River Styx that they will recognize all of their children by the time they turn thirteen, Luke's dying wish. At camp, new cabins are built for every god, including Hades and all the minor gods. Rachel Elizabeth Dare becomes the new Oracle and speaks the next Great Prophecy- Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire, the world must fall. An oath to keep with the final breath, and foes bear arms to the Doors of Death Athena promises Annabeth that she will be the architect that redesigns a decimated Mount Olympus. Grover becomes a Lord of the Wild and a member of the Council of the Cloven Elders. Tyson is rewarded as well, by becoming general of the Cyclopes' army and being given a "stick" (i.e. a new club). Percy is given the choice to become immortal, and a god, but he refuses. Afterward, Annabeth wishes Percy happy birthday and then kisses him. Percy gets the feeling that "my brain was melting through my body". The other campers spy on them and dumps them in the canoe lake. Percy and Annabeth kiss underwater, and from there, start a relationship. Soon after, they immediately start work on the new cabins, rejecting the "horseshoe" style arrangement of the twelve Olympian god's cabins and instead adding more and more. Chiron praises Percy towards the end of camp, and Annabeth and the other campers cheer him on. Percy silently meets again with Hestia, and she gives him a smile and a wink, showing that she is proud of her young nephew. Percy and Annabeth run into the mortal world with Percy narrating, "For once, I didn't look back." |
The Burger and the Hot Dog | null | 2,001 | Several poems have to with behavior and dessert. There are characters such as cheeses named Woodrow and Wanda and eggs named Yack and Yimmy. |
The Wicked Witch of Oz | Rachel Cosgrove Payes | 1,993 | The title character is Singra, the Wicked Witch of the South. She awakens after sleeping for a century; her Magical Musical Snuffbox informs her of all the events she has missed in the last hundred years. Armed with this knowledge, Singra sets out to brew a spell of revenge against Dorothy Gale, the main agent of unwelcome change. Singra waylays the Scarecrow, and tricks the girl she thinks is Dorothy into drinking her potion. Singra, however, has blundered: she has mistaken Trot for Dorothy, turning the little girl into a piece of green cheese. Dorothy sets out to rescue Trot, while Singra continues to seek her vengeance. Dorothy is aided by Percy, a giant talking white rat — a character that Cosgrove Payes introduced in The Hidden Valley of Oz. In their efforts, they encounter a rubber band (that is, a band of rubber musicians), and an animated neon man named Leon — Leon the Neon. The trio of Dorothy, Percy, and Leon confront a giant beehive, and Dorothy and Percy take flight on hummingbird wings. Singra enchants Dorothy into a statue, but her friends, Ozma, the Wizard, Jellia Jamb, and the rest, manage to unravel Singra's scheme. Singra drinks from the Forbidden Fountain, and is purged of her malicious intent along with her memory. Good triumphs in the end. |
The Secret Supper | null | null | It is set while Leonardo DaVinci is painting The Last Supper. The story is told in Agostino Leyre's words, as mysterious letters come in to Rome. He is a chief inquisitor, and so he decides to investigate who had sent these mysterious letters, hinting at heresy. He goes to Santa Maria delle Grazie, where he meets various monks, priests and nuns. But while he is there, various suspicious deaths and rumours takes him into a search for truth- the meaning of The Last Supper. Intrigued, he finds yet another mystery - a blue leather-bound book, portrayed in tarot cards left by the killer of several pilgrims, known as 'The Soothsayer'. |
The Rundelstone of Oz | Eloise McGraw | 2,001 | The Troopadours are travelling entertainers — not human ones, but living marionettes. When they reach the village of Whitherwood in the Gillikin Country, they are enchanted by a malicious magician called Slyddwyn. Most are transformed into inanimate objects — though Slyddwyn leaves the humblest member of the troupe, Pocotristi Sostenuto, free to serve as a menial servant in his castle. (This plot device, of magically turning "people" into inanimate ornaments, reaches back to Baum's third Oz book, Ozma of Oz.) To work his transformations, Slyddwyn uses the Rundelstone, a fist-sized rock with a "rundel" (a rhyming riddle, in this case also an enchantment) carved on it in "flarns" (runes). Puppet protagonist Poco must figure out what has happened to his companions, then obtain the Rundelstone and learn to work its magic. With the help of a young boy named Rolly, and eventually with the aid of Dorothy Gale, Princess Ozma and other familiar denizens of Oz, Poco succeeds in restoring his friends, defeating the villain, and ensuring that Good triumphs. |
Wittgenstein's Nephew | Thomas Bernhard | 1,982 | The author narrates moments of his friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, "nephew" (actually son of a first cousin) of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (not to be confused with the latter's brother, the pianist Paul Wittgenstein). The title is a reference to Diderot's Rameau's Nephew who also deals with the eccentric nephew of a preeminent cultural figure. A very sensitive man, unsuitable for the world, obsessed by an exclusive and cruel passion for music as well as for race cars and sailing, Paul Wittgenstein dissipated his whole fortune and ultimately died poor. The friendship strengthened whilst recovering in a hospital, Bernhard from a lung ailment, Paul from a bout of madness. The latter in fact will die alone in an asylum, a victim of an incurable conflict with the world; whereas the former will succeed in controlling his own madness, emblem of that very conflict, and making it a lever for his sense of social living. Through the narration of symptomatic episodes, Bernhard unravels the emptiness of Austrian society, its parasitic and vain aspects, spending its time to self-congratulate on fake recognitions and futile prizes with the same rhythm used to blather and drink coffee in the best Viennese cafés. Finally, the author gives some interesting advice about the importance of literary prizes as the determining factor of artistic worth: "a prize is invariably only awarded by incompetent people who want to piss on your head and who do copiously piss on your head if you accept their prize." |
Blood on the Forge | William Attaway | 1,941 | ;Part One The novel opens in Kentucky, in the year 1919; sharecropping half-brothers Big Mat, Chinatown, and Melody Moss are in dire straits. After their mule dragged their mother to her death, Big Mat killed the animal in a fit of rage. Now without a mule, the brothers are unable to work their land, and are likely to starve. The landowner, Mr. Johnston, agrees to give the brothers another mule. When Big Mat goes to Mr. Johnston’s riding boss to collect the mule he had been promised, the riding boss refuses to give him the mule, and makes a racist comment about the departed Mrs. Moss. Big Mat's anger again overcomes him and he attacks and possibly kills the riding boss. Earlier that day, Chinatown and Melody are visited by a white man on horseback who gives them a ten-dollar bill, promising much more if the brothers leave that night on a train that would take them North, to work. When Big Mat returns that evening and Melody and Chinatown tell him what the stranger said, Big Mat decides that he and his brothers will head North that very evening. ;Part Two Part Two, the shortest of the novel, chronicles the inhumane conditions of the train in which the Moss brothers are shipped north to Pennsylvania. ;Part Three The Moss brothers arrive at a mill town near Pittsburgh, where they get work in the steel mill and live together in a bunkhouse with the other workers of the mill. On their time off Chinatown and Melody go to a Mexican madam named Sugar Mama where they meet Sugar Mama’s niece Anna, whom Melody becomes infatuated with. Chinatown and Melody convince Big Mat to come with them to a dog fight. When Anna rushes into the ring to prevent the death of one of the dogs, she is hit by the dog’s owner. Big Mat responds by punching the man, which leads to a riot. After the fight breaks up, Anna rushes up to Big Mat and kisses him before running away again. Big Mat takes Anna away from Sugar Mamma and sets up house with her in a small shack. Melody brings a letter from Big Mat's wife Hattie to the shack only to find Anna there alone. When he tells Anna about the letter she tries to snatch it from him; the two wrestle over the letter. The struggle culminates in Melody and Anna having sex. There is a catastrophic accident at the mill that kills 14 men and blinds Chinatown. After this tragedy, the labor union becomes very active and gains many new members. The atmosphere of the town becomes increasingly hostile as the foreign mill workers come to resent the African American workers, who are the only group that refuse to join the union. Big Mat is recruited by the sheriff, who is impressed with Big Mat's strength, to be a deputy and help combat the growing union. Once deputized, Mat is told that he is a boss in the town; after a lifetime of oppression, this new feeling of authority goes to Big Mat’s head like fresh whiskey. Melody decides to cheer Chinatown up after his accident by taking him to visit some prostitutes. Once at the brothel, Melody finds out that Anna has been working there. Melody returns home and tries to convince Anna to run away with him. When Big Mat overhears them, he once again is overpowered by his rage and beats Anna with his brass-studded belt. Later that night Big Mat, along with the Sheriff and his deputies, raid the union headquarters. In the midst of the action, Big Mat is repeatedly hit on the back of the head with a pickaxe handle by a young Slavic union member. Big Mat is killed by the blows. The book ends with Melody and Chinatown leaving the mill town as they take a train to Pittsburgh, where they plan to rebuild their lives. |
The Lonely Voyage | John Harris | 1,951 | This novel is about a boy, Jess Ferigo, who winds up on a voyage of poaching along with Pat Fee and Old Boxer. The story is about his journey into manhood. |
Frost | Thomas Bernhard | 1,963 | Strauch, mad painter, isolates himself from the world by retreating to the hamlet of Weng near Schwarzach im Pongau. His surgeon brother has Strauch watched by his young medical assistant, who narrates the book. The inn where Strauch resides is managed by a woman with a husband in prison and an endless sequence of lovers. The story includes a significant amount of violence and murder. |
Correction | Thomas Bernhard | 1,979 | The Austrian main character Roithamer, lecturer at Cambridge, after years of paroxystic projects, builds for his sister, the only person he ever loved, a house in the shape of a cone, right in the geometrically precise middle of the Kobernausser forest. Her answer to the present is death, her traumatic death on entering the Cone. This cone (see it as you will -- a multitude of symbols, such as a refuge, a mausoleum, a phallic icon, the perfect mathematical centre of existence and thought, etc.) is then destined to disappear, absorbed by an invading Nature, eternal nemesis. A typical Bernhardian maniacal character, Roithamer corrects his building project ad infinitum, and ultimately corrects it to its extreme self-correction: suicide. Correction unravels between love and spite, humanity and degradation, hypocrisy and violence, sickness and death, in a crescendo that brings madness to a dramatic threshold of absolute lucidity. |
First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War | George Weller | 2,006 | The Occupation authorities declared Nagasaki (and Hiroshima) off-limits to reporters. Weller reports that he was the first outside observer to reach Nagasaki, on September 6, 1945, four weeks following the U.S. atomic bombing of the city. He spent a total of three weeks in Nagasaki and in the nearby Allied P.O.W. camps — some of which he "opened", and revisits the series of news reports he published at the time about his experiences. The first dispatches by non-Japanese reporters were filed by Associated Press correspondent Vern Haugland and New York Times Lawrence who visited Nagasaki September 9, 1945. Captain Joe Snyder, press officer with MacArthur headquarters, in his book Para(graph) Trooper For MacArthur: From the Horse Cavalry to the USS Missouri 1997 Chapter 16 "Nagasaki Inferno" pp199–209 describes "boarding a transport plane packed with reporters headed for Nagasaki.[for example: photographers 1. see Google image search Nagasaki Bernard Hoffman (LIFE Magazine) 2. Bettmann/CORBIS September 13, 1945 Stanley Troutman (Acme war pool) 3. Nagasaki and verso ]Other officers and correspondents headed for Hiroshima about the same time, so the world would soon know more than it was prepared to digest about the horrors of the atomic bomb. ... I toured the city with the AP's Jim Hutcheson, among others. He and I had become good friends since our narrow escape on Corregidor. ... There were thousands of stories in Nagasaki and our group saw many pitiful sights of people with radiation burns who, in dreadful agony, were slowly dying. The first thing Japanese doctors asked was if American doctors had a cure for the bomb's effects on the human body. ... We received a report from GHQ that American doctors were coming to Nagasaki soon...." Snyder acknowledges what he calls Wilfrid Burchett's "ingenuity" in successfully reporting from Hiroshima. Snyder does not mention George Weller or any dispatches of George Weller's from Nagasaki. Joe Snyder [1983; owner and editor of the North Missourian] and Walter Cronkite [1964; CBS] are both recipients of the Missouri School of Journalism Honor Medal. From the first days of the Occupation reporters were cleared to cover freeing and rescue operations on behalf of these prisoners. Weller comments: "What the command wanted covered was the prison camps of northern Japan. The dam was to be opened to one last orgy of home town stories, more mindless and more alike than the slow molasses drippings of four years of sloppy, apolitical, dear-mom war....I did not feel that the right way to end this war was to...chew more fodder about what-beasts-the-Japs-are and Jimmy-looks-skinnier-today." The U.S. military in Tokyo censored approximately 55,000 words of his dispatches, along with more than 100 photographs. However, Weller does not refer to governmental censorship of any photographs of his related to Nagasaki. On 07/01/2009 the Telegraph.co.uk published Nagasaki photographs dated September 5, 1945: "After we asked readers for stories and photographs relating to Britain at War, we received these fascinating photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima from Cecil A. Creber, who took them less than a month [Nagasaki = September 5, 1945] after the atom bombs were dropped on both cities [August 6 and 9 1945]." The Linlithgow Gazette 28 November 2008 "Amazing atomic aftermath pics set for key war archives" features a photo of Creber captioned "Life through a lens: Cecil with his faithful Ensign box camera." On 02/13/2010 Mainichi published "New color footage of Nagasaki A-bomb devastation shows need for greater research resources" plus a 01/05/2010 Photo Special [film circa September 11, 1945 found at the United States National Archives in Washington D.C. by Professor Burke-Gaffney]. Weller writes these correspondents "looked like yacht passengers who have stopped to buy basketry on an island." He writes that Colonel McCrary "offered to take carbons of my stories and file them when airborne." The reporters under McCrary's leadership were not subject to censorship, making their dispatches especially valuable. Weller writes: "I refused." "How could I close up my atomic laboratory, with the work only half finished?"...and concludes with the explanation that his refusal is because he wanted to write "something free, big and formal....something ample, leisurely and magnificent." [First into Nagasaki page 19-20] Haugland of The Associated Press states: "We offered Weller a ride back to Tokyo with us,...."[see Haugland infra p. 20] Weller describes a feeling of "hopelessness" about his dispatches because the Kempeitai to whom he claims to have entrusted the stories had "returned to Nagasaki, but they had no message for me."[First into Nagasaki page 21] Weller, although working as a reporter for a daily publication, chose to refuse an offered opportunity either to timely send his Nagasaki dispatches uncensored from the aircraft or alternatively to confront the Occupation censorship directly by filing in Tokyo, despite writing: "I wanted to be prepared to defend every line. If the stories were blocked as reprisal against me, I intended to take the case to MacArthur himself."[First into Nagasaki page 18] Weller traveled to Nagasaki from Kanoya airbase with Sergeant Gilbert Harrison. Harrison's career later included: Chairman of the American Veterans Committee; Editor and Publisher of the The New Republic magazine; author of several books. In Harrison's memoir [Parts of a Past iUniverse June 2009 pages 81–2] he describes carrying George Weller's Nagasaki reporting from an airstrip outside Nagasaki to the Chicago Daily News in Tokyo: A Boston Globe article by Gerald R. Thorp of the Chicago Daily News "TOKYO, Sept. 10(CDN) 'New Brand of Jap to Him!'" indicates that Harrison was by September 10, 1945 accompanying correspondents in Tokyo. The first dispatch presented in First into Nagasaki (see page 25 and photos on cover and back inside endpaper) is datelined Nagasaki September 6 and reads: ..."After a 24-hour trip on what seemed like dozens of trains, the writer arrived here this afternoon as the first visitor from the outside Allied world." On September 6 the Chicago Daily News printed a dispatch under Weller's byline datelined Kanoya, which begins: The remainder of Weller's dispatch consists of a series of direct quotations from men of this medical corps with names, addresses, and photographs (these last are not from in Japan but are formal military portraits). Samples: After the September 6 dispatch from Kanoya, Weller's next dispatch was printed on September 12 with an "Ōmuta, Kyushu" dateline (Omuta was a prisoner of war camp approximately 100 miles by railroad from Nagasaki and twice that from Kanoya. Headlined "New Saga of Boldness For Wermuth as Captive" it is an account of the famous "One-Man-Army" Captain Arthur W. Wermuth continuing his leadership as a POW on a Hellship carrying prisoners to Japan. The photograph in First into Nagasaki facing the Introduction by Anthony Weller xv is captioned "George Weller (r.) with Admiral Chester Nimitz on board the U.S.S. Missouri for the treaty signing, Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945." This caption is incorrect since the figure on the left of the picture is not Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the signer as United States Representative of the proceedings' documents. In all still images and moving pictures of the Japanese surrender ceremony Nimitz is seen wearing Navy cap with full "scrambled eggs" denoting his five-star rank. The personage in the photograph appears to be John Knight, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, who was in attendance on the USS Missouri as a guest of the Secretary of the Navy. With reference to this photograph supra presented in First into Nagasaki, the Battleship Missouri Memorial at Pearl Harbor: "can confirm that the individual pictured to the left in the photograph is not Fleet Admiral Nimitz." http://www.ussmissouri.org George Weller was actually photographed with a prominent naval figure Hiram Cassidy[sic] by the Associated Press on March 25, 1943 AP Images ID 4303250106. The picture was taken just before Weller's letter to the Foreign Editor of the Chicago Daily News quoted in Weller's War pp355–6. At left is Commander Hiram Cassedy[correct spelling], then Captain of Searaven, hero of several submarine engagements in South-west Pacific (Submarine Operations in World War II US Naval Institute Eight Printing December 1965 pages 104,193-4,233,463). At right is George Weller wearing British-type tropical uniform of shorts and knee socks. Cassedy (later Admiral) commanding Tigrone went on to lead a submarine group "Hiram's Hecklers" and also to hold the Pacific record for "lifeguard" duty (with 31 rescues; Ibid. pp 471–3). The Chicago Daily News September 8, 1945 printed prominently two photographs credited 'Associated Press Wirephoto' showing one American foreign correspondent amidst an obliterated surrounding former city. These photographs feature in the background what has become the widely recognized symbol for the atom bombs dropped on Japan, the shell of a pre-war structure which has been preserved as it looked then. Now commonly referred to as "A-Bomb Dome" it is on the UNESCO World Heritage List registered as "Hiroshima Peace Memorial." The CDN 1945 captions read: #"An Allied war correspondent looks over the twisted steel and masonry in what was the city of Hiroshima before it was struck by an atomic bomb." #"No show tonight. An Allied war correspondent stands in a sea of rubble, looking at the remains of what once was a Hiroshima movie theatre." [Nagasaki photographs (Associated Press: Stanley Troutman; creation date September 13, 1945) in database AP Images (available through libraries).] Photographs of Nagasaki had already been printed September 1, 1945. Caption: "Nagasaki Today - Japanese workers (foreground) carry away debris in a devastated area of atom-bombed Nagasaki. Smokestacks and a lone building stand in the background. This picture is from Domei, official Jap news agency." Transmission credit is to Associated Press Wirephoto. Photographs published in First into Nagasaki in 2006 already had appeared in the Chicago Daily News in 1945. [emphasis added] *Exhibit A: subject: George Weller and Logan Kay; source + locator: First into Nagasaki page 146 (example #1), book jacket front cover (example #2), jacket spine (example #3) = Chicago Daily News October 18, 1945 'Part II - Wake Ghosts' Diary: Navy's Return Raises False Hopes ships shell and leave, so 'Crusoes' give up' Caption: Memento of Terror—Logan "Scotty" Kay, Clearlake Park, Calif., one of the "ghosts" of Wake Island, who hid from the Japs for 77 days, shows George Weller (left) of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service, a helmet bearing the names of many men who died on Wake and at a prison camp in Japan. / *Exhibit B: subject: George Weller and James Jordan; source + locator: First into Nagasaki between pages 176 and 177 (14 of 18) = example #1: Chicago Daily News November 20, 1945 'Chapter Ten Death Cruise: Thirst Kills Yanks' Caption: 'He Could Take It—Thirty-three years in the Marines made Sgt.Maj. James J. Jordan (right) tough enough to survive the "cruise of death" to Japan. Here he is telling his story to George Weller of the Daily News Foreign Service. Asked for his home address the veteran said "the Halls of Montezuma, or, for an alternative, "the Shores of Tripoli."' [punctuation sic] example #2: Chicago Daily News April 10, 1964 Caption: 'Correspondent Weller chats with a released PW in camp near Nagasaki in 1945.' |
Penelope and the Humongous Burp | null | null | Penelope can't control her burping after she drinks a few glasses of grape soda to quickly. |
The Emperor Lays an Egg | null | null | An Emperor Penguin father has to protect his egg for two months while the mother is off searching for food. The book has information about the birth cycle of Emperor Penguins and it has a story of a mother and father caring for their egg. |
Bat Loves the Night | null | null | The book tells the story about a bat and the book also has info about bats with illustrations that show bats flying, hanging, and walking. It also talks about the different kinds of bats in the world. |
Miss Ranskill Comes Home | null | null | The novel tells the story of a woman who returns to England after being stranded on a desert island during the Second World War. |
For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever | null | null | The book has 100 short articles that appeals to boys such as biting spiders, Easter Island, invisibility cloaks, and fake blood. It also includes a set of 39 codes for the reader to solve, which vary in difficulty. |
Deaf People in Hitler's Europe | null | null | The Nazi campaign against the handicapped began on July 14, 1933 with the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. The Nazis sterilized people with disabilities such as mental illness, retardation, blindness, and deaf people. It was justified by scientists and the doctors who certified patients conditions as hereditary in order to prevent such handicapped people from bearing children. Teachers and others were involved in the certification process. 375,000 people were sterilized by force and an estimated 17,000 of the people sterilized were deaf. Later Action T4 killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination" from 1939-41 officially and up to 1945 unofficially. |
Mōryō no Hako | null | null | Police detective Kiba finds himself investigating a very strange case involving a girl hit by a train, her actress sister, and a sinister hospital shaped like a box. As the girl's friend's mother becomes obsessed with Mōryō, the police begin finding young girls' limbs strewn around the countryside in boxes. |
Onions in the Stew | Betty MacDonald | null | The book covers the period from 1942 to 1954. The book opens just after Pearl Harbor, divorced mother Betty was living with her two children, Anne (12) and Joan (11) in her mother's home, while working in the office of a building contractor. She met and married Donald MacDonald and they began searching for a home. Not being able to find a suitable house in Seattle or the mainland suburbs as a result of the wartime influx of population, they tried the local islands, finally finding a property on Vashon Island. The early part describes the problems of commuting from a home without a road. The children have the choice of the beach if the tide is low, or walk to a neighbours (who do have a road) to catch the school bus. The adults have to follow a muddy trail to catch a ferry, which is usually done at a rush. Their house was intended as a summer home, so as a result is cold in the winter, so priorities change. "Creosote logs" on the beach are highly prized. Stormy weather brings a "bark tide" of firewood which must be quickly gathered. Various neighbours provide help, hindrance or confusion. At the same time, there are quite poetic pieces on some of the joys of getting food from the sea and land, and domestic scenes of the girls going through adolescence. |
The Blood Confession | null | null | The book follows the character of Countess Erzebet, a young noblewoman held prisoner while being charged with murder. As the book unfolds, Erzebet tells her life's story, from her ill-omened birth to the crimes she's charged with. |
Harriet's Halloween Candy | null | 1,984 | Harriet doesn't want to share her Halloween candy with her little brother. She is running out of places to hide her candy so she tries to think of a solution. |
Paradox in Oz | Edward Einhorn | 1,999 | As the novel opens, inhabitants of Oz are suddenly noticing unusual signs of aging. Omby Amby finds a white hair in his luxurious green beard, and common citizens confront wrinkles and back problems. Ozma and her advisers realize that the magic anti-aging spell, which has prevailed in Oz throughout her reign, has now stopped working. In their attempt to figure out why, Ozma and Glinda consult the Great Book of Records, but find cryptic references to the "Man Who Lives Backwards." (This person is actually living in Glinda's palace at the moment; but since he lives backwards, he is a baby in the present time, and cannot explain himself to them.) In trying to puzzle out the problem, Ozma and Glinda confront a Parrot-Ox — a large magic creature, half parrot and half ox. "Its front half was covered with red, blue, and green plumage, and out from among its feathers proudly emerged a bright yellow beak. Two large, orange wings rested against its body, which was a speckled brown, and it had a long black tail with a feathered end. It stood upon four hooved feet, and its dark eyes darted nervously around the room, dismayed at being discovered." They learn that these creatures, normally invisible, are amazingly common; they co-exist with us in our everyday lives. A Parrot-Ox is "capable of doing nothing at all, unless it is impossible." This particular Parrot-Ox calls himself Tempus. To resolve the mystery of the aging of Oz, Ozma rides Tempus back in time, to meet her predecessor King Oz in the forest surrounding the Forbidden Fountain. She encounters a curious person called Dr. Majestico, and she accidentally changes the past so that Oz becomes an evil place, ruled by a tyrannical Wizard from an Obsidian City, a negative-image of her own Emerald City. She must deal with altered versions of her familiar friends: the beautiful Glinda is old and worn, while the Tin Woodman is a human and very malevolent headsman, Nick Chopper. In her efforts to remedy the situation, Ozma takes more and more trips into the past; the woods around the Forbidden Fountain are soon filled with Ozmas from different times. Ozma must confront Tip, her own earlier male self, and take a journey to Absurd City to find the Man Who Lives Backwards; she must face mind-boggling confusions, and numerous Parrot-Oxes, before she can restore the familiar world she knows and loves. |
The Holocaust Kid | null | null | The book has fifteen stories that is loosely based on the life of author Sonia Pilcer. Zosha Palovsky, who prefers to call herself Zoe, was born in Europe in a camp for DPs. She moved to New York with her parents, Genia and Heniek, when she was a toddler. Zoe reconciles her dreams with her parents' experiences. The first story called Do You Deserve To Lie is narrated by Zoe who works for a movie magazine and does things that her parents doesn't appreciate. Two stories tell about how Genia was saved from the gas chambers and how she met Heniek after the war. In another story, it talks about how Heniek escaped from Auschwitz. Other stories have to do with Zoe appreciating her parents more, marrying, and going on vacation with her parents. |
A Fish Out Of Water | Helen Palmer Geisel | 1,961 | The story is about a boy who buys a fish, named Otto, from a pet shop. The pet shop owner, Mr. Carp, gives the boy instructions on how to care for the fish, including strict feeding instructions: "Never feed him a lot. Never more than a spot! Or something may happen. You never know what." When the boy ignores these instructions out of compassion for his new pet, Otto begins to outgrow his fishbowl. This leads the boy to move him into several different vases and a bathtub until the house fills up with water. The boy requests help from a police officer and the fire department, who help him take Otto down to the local pool. There, they drop the fish in, causing it to expand to the size of the pool and scare off all of the swimmers. Unsure of what to do, the boy calls Mr. Carp. Mr. Carp is not surprised as boys always ignore his feeding instructions, and he comes as quickly as possible. Mr. Carp dives into the pool and pulls Otto below. Eventually, Mr. Carp brings the fish back up to the surface returned to its normal size. He refuses to say how he did it, but tells the boy to never overfeed Otto again. So, the boy decides after the adventures he had that day that he will never overfeed his fish again. |
Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday | null | null | Otto, now using the name Waldo, has returned to Earth from Mars after ten years. Now nearly 30, he adjusts to life in mid-1990s, and gets a boring job as a telemarketer. When Waldo receives a call offering a free Hawaiian vacation, he makes taking the trip his goal, but his efforts are repeatedly thwarted by bureaucracy. It is eventually revealed that these difficulties are intentional, and that Los Angeles is actually an experimental self-maintaining prison constructed by Martians to contain humans. Waldo returns to his job and never goes on vacation. |
Policeman Bluejay | L. Frank Baum | 1,907 | At the story's start, Twinkle and Chubbins are lost in a "great forest." They encounter a "tuxix" — a creature that looks like a spiny turtle, but is in reality "a magician, a sorcerer, a wizard, and a witch all rolled into one...and you can imagine what a dreadful thing that would be." The evil tuxix casts a spell on the children, transforming them into little bird-like beings, with their own heads but the bodies of skylarks. (They resemble the human-headed, bird-bodied sirins, alkonosts, and gamayuns of Russian folklore.) Policeman Bluejay, the force of order in the avian world of the forest, leads the two child-larks on a flight through the sky; he esconces them in an abandoned thrush's nest in a maple tree, and with the help of a friendly eagle he retrieves their picnic basket (so that they don't have to eat bugs, worms, and grubs). Twinkle and Chubbins learn of their new maple-tree neighbors, a squirrel, an owl, and an o'possum; and Policeman Bluejay introduces them to the community of birds. The children see that the world of living beings in the forest has structure, relationships, and conflict. They hear stories of human cruelty to animals — and soon they witness it firsthand, when hunters enter the forest. The hunters kill Mrs. 'Possum and Mrs. Hootaway and Wisk the squirrel; Twinkle tries to protest, but she can only make a skylark's chirp. The hunters' dog almost catches Twinkle — but she and Chubbins are rescued by their friend the eagle, who swoops down, kills the dog, and leads them to safety. Or relative safety, at least: the eagle takes the two lark-children up to his eyrie, where his hungry hatchlings want to eat them for breakfast. (Baum acknowledges that animals, to survive, have to prey upon each other. Yet he maintains that "love" is the Grand Law of the forest.) Policeman Bluejay escorts the children to a safer location. Soon he takes them to the Paradise of Birds, where the contentions and violence of the forest never penetrate. The children are given a tour of its splendors, and meet the King Bird of Paradise. In the "suburbs" of Paradise, the child-larks are introduced to the community of bees, and meet the Queen Bee; and they witness a spectacular flight of butterflies. Beyond Paradise, in "the coarse, outer world," there is trouble in birdland; Policeman Bluejay must cope with a rebellion among the rooks, who would make the other birds their slaves. By uniting, the smaller birds beat the rooks in a battle. The King Bird of Paradise and his Royal Necromancer have told the children that they can restore themselves to human form by eating a fruit called "tingle-berries." They do so, and return to their normal bodies — though Chubbins almost gets stuck halfway. Their adventure done, the children make their way home in the waning light of evening. |
Resistance: The Gathering Storm | William C. Dietz | 2,009 | The novel primarily focus on a presidential conspiracy through the actions of President Noah Grace, who realized the inevitable that his nation will fall to the Chimera, announced to his Cabinet of implementing a compromise known as Project Omega which calls for a negotiation between the United States and the Chimera - through the former human being Jordan Shepherd, known as Daedalus. Grace reasoned his decision as a necessary option in having the United States to be spared in the Chimeran War at the expense of the world (as Grace planned to withdraw America's forces from other theaters of conflict). Furthermore, Grace, privately, intended the negotiations to save himself, and only himself. This decision is met with disgust and outrage from Grace's Secretary of War Henry Walker, who recognized this as treason and secretly records Grace's plans. After Project Omega was overall accepted by Grace's cabinet, Walker fled with his wife to the resistance group Freedom First in Chimera-occupied Chicago in order to expose Project Omega; however, while en-route to the city the Walkers are captured by the Chimera and taken to a mining pit in Wisconsin alongside with the other human prisoners that is being used as a conversion center. Henry Walker's absence became aware by Grace who ordered a manhunt on Walker either dead or alive. In which the search for Walker was led by Chief of Staff William Dentweiler, who is also in charged of Daedalus's capture. Meanwhile, Nathan Hale returned to his adopted home in South Dakota, now under Gray Territory, to learn the fate of his foster family. Unfortunately, he soon discovered that his entire family were killed during the invasion save for his foster sister, Susan Farley, who had escaped the slaughter. Following his fore-naught search, Hale and his unit Echo Team were ordered by Dentweiler to find Walker on the basis that the former Secretary of War is betraying his species to the Chimera. Following a lead in Chicago after contacting Freedom First, they only to learn that Walker hadn't came to Freedom First. Still unaware of Walker's capture by the Chimera, SRPA sent Hale to infiltrate a Freedom First training camp in Montana to learn of Walker's whereabouts but only to be outed when reunited with Susan, who had joined Freedom First. Hale is released on good relations for previously fighting alongside Freedom First in Chicago, and came out empty handed on Walker. Susan also refuses to come with Hale as she had decided to remain with Freedom First due to her disillusionment with the Grace administration and it's increasingly totalitarian nature. By December, William Dentweiler successfully captured Daedalus after luring him to rescue his wife Hannah, who was apprehended against her will, from torture by government agents, and then being brought to a military base near Sheridan, Wyoming while threatened under electrocution to prevent his escape and establish his cooperation. The news of Daedalus's capture enlightened President Grace to carry out a "Victory Tour" in the American heartland from the nation's temporarily capital in Denver (after Washington, D.C. was struck by a Spire attack). At this moment, Susan and another Freedom First rebel plot to take advantage of the Victory Tour to assassinate the president. As Grace prepares a speech in front of Denver's Capitol, Susan prepares to kill Grace by sniper fire but only to be spotted by Hale, who was assigned as leader of a Sentinel security detachment for the president, foil the assassination and leading to Susan's immediate arrest. In Wisconsin, Henry Walker - who had lost his wife - and the other prisoners made an escape attempt through building escape tunnels. Only a few prisoners made out of the pit, among them Harley Burl, who was befriended by Walker, was able to escape to American territory and informed SRPA of Walker's location. A Sentinel strike force is deployed to the mining pit. Hale joins the strike force alongside with Burl and William Dentweiler, who the latter had insisted to come along to ensure Walker's death. After rescuing the prisoners, Burl learned from them that Walker had been taken and converted. He then informs to Hale about what he learned from Walker about Project Omega and the recordings he possessed. Hale detained Dentweiler and ordered his Sentinels to search for Walker; however, they are set upon by more Chimeran forces in which during the battle Dentweiler escaped and had fled inside the conversion center. Hale and several Sentinels enters the center and find the Chief of Staff having been cocooned and nearly converted into a Chimera. Dentweiler is then euthanized and Walker's recordings are salvaged. After learning the full disclosure of Project Omega through Walker's recording, Hale traveled to Sheridan where Grace had arrived to negotiate the terms with Daedalus. Hale, as head of the SRPA Sentinel detachment of the president's security team, easily accesses the chamber Grace is interrogating Shepherd in and, instead of killing Daedalus when he has the chance, he shoots Grace in the head with his rifle, killing him. Daedalus then immediately take advantage of Grace's death and breaks free of his confinement by sending out a mental blast and paralyzed every human being within the vicinity, as he escaped to an awaiting Chimeran battlecruiser. Shortly thereafter, Daedalus is blamed on Grace's death and the entire events of Omega is covered up to the general population. Hale's superior Major Richard Blake plans on notifying Vice President Harvey McCullen of his sudden succession. |
Scarlett | null | null | Scarlett is a 12 year old girl from London, is sent to live with her father and his new family in southern Ireland after being expelled from school. There, after escaping from her new school after just one day, she meets a mysterious boy called Kian who gradually reveals there is more to him than meets the eye. She slowly begins to drop her bad girl image under his influence. But when Kian leaves and her pregnant step mum Clare doesnt no what to do Scarlett is a troubled 12 year old girl who acts out and has attended five schools. She had a brilliant life up until she was 10 years old when her father left them to go live in Ireland with his new partner Clare and her nine year old daughter Holly. This affects Scarlett deeply and with encouragement from her mother, grows very angry at her dad, tearing up birthday cards and various other presents given to her from him. Scarlett acts out a lot in school and after her third suspension from Greenhall Academy, she is permanently excluded, due to her causing a riot in the school cafeteria, insulting dinner ladies and throwing food around. Her mother is extremely disappointed and tells her she has no other choice but to send her to live with her father. Scarlett protests, throws things, shouts, but her mother stands her ground and sends her away. Scarlett is determined to be as bad as possible when she gets there, to scare them and show her dad she has changed big time and how much his leaving has affected her. Her mother asks her not to tell her dad that she got her tongue pierced but Scarlett shows every intention of doing so. Her father collects her from Knock Airport and she is set on not talking to him at all but in the car, breaks this silence accidentally. Her father persists in talking to her, being friendly and apologizing but Scarlett will not accept any of what he is saying. When they get to the cottage, Scarlett discovers something very unexpected - Clare, her stepmother, is pregnant. Clare's daughter, Holly - Scarlett's stepsister - is a very bubbly and friendly nine year old, chatting to Scarlett, although she does not exactly get a very enthusiastic response. For school the next day, Scarlett avoids it by pretending she forgot her pencil case and purposefully missing the bus she was supposed to take with Holly. Her father catches her in the house, however, and drives her to the school, very disappointed in her. Scarlett gets upset doing an Irish worksheet about "Mo Chlann", or "My Family". She climbs out of the window and walks for miles, eventually being rescued by Kian, a boy of about 13 or 14, on a black horse named Midnight. Scarlett's father tells her she is going to be home schooled, at least for the time being. She enjoys this as she gets to study at the lough, talking to Kian, drawing the different plants and naming them in different languages. She is progressing well and settling in with her new family. Kian's father and uncle come looking for him but Scarlett tells them she doesn't know Kian. She tells Kian and apologises and he accepts but says he will have to go back - he ran away after his mother died of cancer. They arrange to say goodbye at one o`clock down at the lough. The summer holidays have started and Holly asks Scarlett to pierce her nose. Scarlett refuses but when she blackmailed by Holly (Holly says she will tell Scarlett's father about the real reason why she went down to the lough so often - Kian) she agrees. Holly jumps at the last minute and the pin they were using slips, piercing a hole in Holly's lip by mistake. Holly is taken to hospital and gets stitches and the adults are very disappointed in Scarlett although for once, she apologizes for her actions. The next day, Holly and Chris, Scarlett's dad, head up to Galway for a dentist's appointment and to deliver handmade soap that Clare makes for a living. Scarlett helps Clare with her soap while Holly and Chris are gone and then Scarlett offers to contribute something towards Clare's quilt that she is making for the new baby - all the family put in a piece of their own clothing to stitch in. They go up to the attic and Scarlett discovers her father kept all her old dresses and toys although he was meant to throw them away. Meanwhile, a lightning storm has started up and thunderous noises make them go back downstairs. On the way down the ladder, there is a blackout and Clare screams and falls down. After waking her up, Scarlett discovers Clare is in labour. She runs to the lough for Kian's help as it is just approaching the time they had set to say goodbye - one o`clock. He is nowhere to be seen but on her way back to the cottage she finds two American tourists who drive them to the hospital and let Scarlett use their mobile phone to call Scarlett's father and inform him of the recent events. Clare has a long labour and the baby is premature so is put in an incubator, to be on the safe side. They decide on a baby name: Hazel. Scarlett decides that she should go back home to London and is happy there at last. |
Crab Moon | null | null | A young child, David, follows his mother to the summer rental and is amazed at horseshoe crabs that emerge to lay their eggs. The next morning, he finds an upended crab and he rights her. |
The Loser | Thomas Bernhard | 1,983 | In Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1953 the main characters met a young Canadian prodigy who played the Goldberg Variations miraculously and who, they quickly came to realize, was a greater pianist than even their teacher -- indeed, "the most important piano virtuoso of the century," as the narrator puts it in the novel's opening sentence. The encounter with Gould affects both characters decisively for almost three decades, as they experience an endless series of personal and intellectual travails. In fact, Gould’s talent triggers the suicidal tendencies of his two colleagues: so great is the impact of Gould's genius on the other two that, even as it nourishes them, it destroys them: they realize that Gould represents an artistic ideal to which they cannot hope to aspire. So the narrator eventually decides to give up the piano in favour of philosophy, and spends much of his subsequent time composing a rambling, never-completed essay entitled "About Glenn Gould". Wertheimer, who had been a very promising virtuoso himself, follows suit, abandoning music and moving into the "human sciences", the meaning of which is left vague. Eventually, Wertheimer behaviour becomes more and more erratic and self-destructive; he alienates all his friends, and tyrannises his devoted sister. It was Gould who, with his "ruthless and open, yet healthy American-Canadian manner" first called Wertheimer, to his face, "The Loser" ("Der Untergeher" -- a much more evocative word, lit. "the one who goes under"). As Wertheimer comes to see the accuracy of this epithet, he gradually loses his grip on life. |
Shadow Wave | Robert Muchamore | 2,010 | Shadow Wave begins with James Adams working undercover with MI5 as a Brigands Motorcycle Club biker, trying to bring down its leader Ralph "The Führer" Donnington (continuing from the eleventh CHERUB book - Brigands M.C.). His girlfriend Kerry Chang is also working with him as an interpreter in a set-up weapons deal. The police surround them and the Führer tries to escape and ends up falling down a cliff and seriously damaging his leg. He is taken into police custody. James returns to CHERUB campus to a wedding between some CHERUB staff and meets a lot of his old friends, as well as, staff, including his former girlfriend Dana Smith who retired the previous year, and retired agent Kyle Blueman. Kyle finds a mission briefing for James to act as the son of David Secombe, an important figure in the British Government who is negotiating a weapons deal with Malaysian Defence Minister Tan Abdullah when he comes to the UK. Kyle tells James about how, when he was assisting in a CHERUB intensive training course in Malaysia in 2004, he met a young boy named Aizat Rakyat, who told him how Abdullah is demolishing native villages to make way for luxurious hotels. When the Boxing Day tsunami struck he used the disaster to "evacuate" the villagers and therefore built more hotels. James, disgusted, quits the mission and joins Kyle in a scheme to embarrass Abdullah. James' sister, Lauren Adams, and a younger agent Kevin Sumner are also going on the mission. James sneaks into Lauren's room in the early morning and installs a tracking device in her cellphone. He is then about to leave when his friend Bruce Norris (who has broken up with his girlfriend Bethany Parker) agrees to join them. Together, they go and meet Helena Bayliss, runner of charity Guilt Trips and journalist Hugh Verhoeven. Lauren and Kevin go on a shopping trip with the daughter and son of Tan Abdullah, and James, using the tracking device in Lauren's phone, invites paparazzi to their locations, embarrassing Tan Abdullah's family. Eventually, James leaves for Stanford University in California. When James returns to London to visit Kerry and Lauren, they visit Gwen Choke's grave, and clean the headstone up. The three of them leave after Kerry tells them that Gwen, if she could see them now, would be very proud of them. In the epilogue of the book it is said that Bethany Parker is expelled from CHERUB because she breached security by continuing to have a relationship with someone she met outside campus on a mission. Kerry leaves CHERUB campus and joins James in Stanford University. Even though Kerry was suspicious that James cheated on her during his first year of college, he did not. Meatball is also revealed to have become a father of three puppies. Ron died from throat cancer shortly after being released from prison and James meets his dad after seeing his name on one of his school textbooks. |
Couldn't Keep it to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters | Wally Lamb | 2,003 | For several years, Wally Lamb taught writing skills to inmates at the York Correctional Institution, a women's prison in Niantic, Connecticut. The book contains personal stories written by the inmates dealing with their lives. Most were sexually, physically, or mentally abused, and came from impoverished backgrounds. |
The Believers | Zoë Heller | 2,008 | In 1962, at a party in London, 18 year-old Audrey Howard meets Joel Litvinoff, a prominent leftist lawyer involved with the civil rights movement who is on a short visit from the United States. Although Litvinoff is a complete stranger and fourteen years her senior, the two feel a mutual attraction, and when Litvinoff, after they have had sex, half-seriously suggests that Audrey follow him to the United States and become his wife, she takes him up on his offer without hesitation as she feels her chance has come to break away from her unexciting life as a typist in suburban London. Both Joel and Audrey are Jewish but were raised in non-observant families. When they start their own family in Greenwich Village, they pride themselves on being atheists and thus having to fear nothing from death or life thereafter. Audrey bears two girls, Karla and Rosa, and the couple also adopt Lenny, whose mother, a left-wing radical, is serving a long-term prison sentence. Underneath the liberal veneer, however, the Litvinoffs display many of the characteristics of a traditional family: Audrey dedicates her existence to supporting her husband's legal career, turns a blind eye to his many extra-marital affairs, and does not oppose the patriarchal attitudes and behaviour that he exhibits at home. For four decades, their family life develops according to their chosen socialist agenda, which has its foundation in the ambition to fight injustice, help the weak, and, generally, make the world a better place to live. In 2002, at age 72, Joel is still active as a successful and charismatic defense lawyer, in his current case representing, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, an Arab American man accused of being a terrorist. Rosa, a rather attractive young woman, is a disillusioned revolutionary whose four-year stay in Castro's Cuba has alienated her from her socialist principles and has recently made her turn to Orthodox Judaism for an answer to the fundamental questions of life. She now works with disadvantaged children, although she thoroughly hates this job. Single, she shares a small flat with another young woman who has a more glamorous job and a more carefree outlook on life. Her sister Karla, who has had to fight obesity since childhood, is a social worker at a hospital—when she was young she was not encouraged by her parents to be a lawyer like her father—whose marriage to Mike, a labor union activist, has turned sour and remained childless in spite of her ongoing efforts to become pregnant. Joel and Audrey's adopted son Lenny has a history of drug abuse and a girlfriend called Tanya but no other assets to speak of; the family suspect that he might be using drugs again. During a court session, Joel has a stroke from which he will never recover. Unconscious at first, he is hospitalised and falls into a coma. All the family members gather around the patient but there is nothing they can do to improve his condition. After several months have passed, Audrey is approached by the doctors who inform her that now would be the appropriate time to turn off all life-sustaining equipment. Audrey is furious and does not give her consent although at the same time she realizes her hypocrisy: terminating his life would be in accordance with a mutual agreement they made long before his stroke. Eventually, a few weeks after her refusal, Joel contracts an infection and dies. Shortly after Joel's hospitalisation, Audrey meets Berenice Mason, a young, unattractive African American freelance photographer and visual artist who claims that Joel is the father of her four year-old son Jamil. Audrey is incredulous at first but after seeing written proof realizes the woman is telling the truth. For Audrey, this revelation is more distressing than her husband's illness as it occurs to her how little their relationship has been based on mutual trust and honesty: While their father is dying the Litvinoff children try to pursue their own happiness. When Lenny collapses during a family gathering and admits to taking drugs again, he is sent to the country for the summer, far away from the lure of substance abuse, to stay with a friend of Audrey. Meanwhile, Rosa tries to satisfy her newfound curiosity about Orthodox Judaism by spending a weekend with a rabbi's family in Monsey. Uncertain about her future, at around the same time she also has a date with a former colleague from university. Although it is soon obvious to her that the man has become a self-obsessed bore, she has sex with him, only never to see him again. At the close of the novel, after her father's death, Rosa is preparing her departure for Jerusalem, to study the Torah at a yeshiva. Unbeknownst to her husband Mike, Karla's dead-end marriage will not last much longer. While outwardly complying with her spouse's wish to adopt a child, Karla starts an on-and-off affair with the overweight Arab American owner of the newspaper shop at the hospital where she works. At the end of the novel she prematurely leaves the post-memorial reception held in honour of her father to meet her lover and possibly to remain with him. |
A Case of Exploding Mangoes | Mohammed Hanif | 2,008 | The central theme of the book is a fictitious story behind the real life plane crash which killed General Zia, president of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, about which there are many conspiracy theories. After witnessing a tank parade in Bahawalpur, Zia left the small Punjabi town in the C-130 Hercules aircraft designated 'Pak One'. Shortly after a smooth take-off, the control tower loses contact with the aircraft. Witnesses who saw the plane in the air later claimed it was flying erratically, before nosediving and exploding on impact, killing General Zia and several other senior army generals, in addition to Arnold Raphel, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, and General Herbert M. Wassom, the head of the U.S. Military aid mission to Pakistan. Zia had ruled Pakistan for 11 years prior to his death. The book develops through the eyes of the narrator, Ali Shigri, a Junior Officer in the Pakistani Air Force who seeks revenge for the death of his father, which he is convinced, although apparently a suicide, was orchestrated by General Zia himself. |
Adored | Cecily von Ziegesar | 2,009 | Brett Messerschmidt is organizing Waverly Academy's annual holiday ball and secret gift exchange. But when some enterprising students decide that playing Secret Satan is infinitely more fun than playing Secret Santa, the entire school starts acting naughty. All Brett wants is a successful party-and a goodnight kiss from unexpected crush Sebastian Valenti. Too bad Callie Vernon also has her eye on the newly made-over Sebastian after breaking up with Easy Walsh. Contradicting, she also seems to still have feelings for her ex... . Everybody at Waverly is getting into the giving spirit. The only present Tinsley Carmichael wants to unwrap is her new boyfriend, Julian McCafferty. But what happens when she uncovers a shady secret from his past instead-that he has already lost his virginity. When did he lose it? Bigger question: Whom did he lose it to? Looks like Jenny Humphrey, Waverly's newest small-screen star, after being chosen to star in a documentary about popular girls, is about to land on Tinsley's hit list. Again. With raucous get-togethers and secret admirers, theres never a dull day in the life of an It Girl. But no one ever said being adored was easy. . . |
The Giant Garden of Oz | Eric Shanower | null | Temporally, Shanower places his novel at the end of the twentieth century; he takes up the story of Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, the surrogate parents of Dorothy Gale. In his sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz, Baum had brought the two characters from the mundane world of Kansas to the Emerald City, where they enjoyed a blissful retirement. At the start of The Giant Garden of Oz, the couple, "after eighty-some years of a life of luxury," have decided to return to farming. (Inhabitants of Oz do not age, unless they want to.) They have acquired a small farm in the Munchkin Country; with magical aids designed by the Wizard of Oz, their farm labor is much less demanding than in the Kansas of their past. Dorothy comes to pay her first visit to the new farm — but encounters an unprecedented problem. Overnight, the couple's vegetable garden grows to enormous size, with giant beets, broccoli, peppers, and watermelons, and heads of cabbage twenty feet high. The farmhouse is hemmed in by a vegetable wall. Dorothy sets out for the Emerald City, climbing a landscape of mountainous produce. Outside the garden, she crosses the Munchkin Country and meets new friends, principally a white-and-purple cow named Imogene, who gives varying dairy products depending upon her mood: :"When I'm content I give regular plain old milk. When I'm thinking hard and get into a brown study I give chocolate milk. When I'm sad and blue I give skim milk. When I get excited, which doesn't happen often, I give butter. And when I get real angry, sour cream." In a crisis, Imogene can yield a healing golden milk; and in the course of the tale, she gives whipped cream and ice cream too. (Imogene the cow originated in The Wizard of Oz, the 1902 stage adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.) Imogene talks Dorothy into accepting her companionship (the cow wants to see the Emerald City). With the help of the Wizard, Dorothy begins to unravel the mystery of the giant garden, and to follow the trail of a would-be witch called Old Magda who is its cause. The task isn't easy; the trio endure a thunderstorm and a near-crash-landing during a balloon flight. Magda created a giantism potion to make her gardening more productive and her life easier — but lost control of it; giant moles, eating the giant vegetables, become a pest to all and sundry. Dorothy falls prey to giantism herself and endures a subterranean ordeal before she, the Wizard, and Princess Ozma resolve the problem and restore the normal order of Oz. In the end, Dorothy and her friends face a choice. They rescue Old Magda and Imogene the cow from being buried alive; then they learn that they can revive one or the other, but not both. Saving the old witch can lead to the antidote for Dorothy's giantism; but Dorothy finds she cannot allow her bovine companion to die. Once recovered, however, Imogene supplies the golden milk that restores Magda too. The antidote is obtained, and Dorothy is restored to her normal size. Old Magda reforms, and Imogene gets her tour of the Emerald City. |
Woodcutters | Thomas Bernhard | 1,984 | It’s eleven thirty at night in an elegant Viennese home in the 80s. A group of people are awaiting – with some impatience and increasing appetite – the arrival of a famous dramatic actor, guest of honour, in order to start eating the sophisticated dinner, in fact the "artistic dinner", as the hosts love to state. The place is that of the Auersbergers, a married couple whom the narrator hasn’t seen for twenty years: she’s a singer, he’s a "composer in the wake of Webern", both "idiosyncratically consumed". The play just performed by the awaited actor is one of Ibsen’s: The Wild Duck at the Burgtheater. The whole novel is an account of what the narrator sees and hears while sitting on a chair with a glass of champagne in his hand and, subsequently, at the table during dinner. Bernhard devastates with the axe of his prose (just like a wood cutter) the world of pretentiousness and intellectual inconsistence, not only related to a certain Viennese scene, but also to all that surrounds us: he’s implacable, ferociously comic, inexhaustible in the variations and returns to theme. The scene develops and the "artistic dinner" unravels in all its hypocritical farce, whilst the narrator relives the last two decades, his connections and affective ties with the various guests, his relationship with the woman (Joana) who united in friendship all of them and finally committed suicide. In closing, the novel reaches momentum through the actor’s indignant outburst against one of the guests (Billroth) who had been offensive to him and malignant to all the whole night. He then becomes sad and reflective and allows, in a maudlin and romanticized scene, that he often believes he would have been better off to lived a rural life and to have been a woodcutter. The marvellous play on the word which allows both the romanticism of this world of the native savage, and yet refers to the super sophisticated and bitter criticism of the social cynic is a stroke of Bernhardian genius. When the elderly actor is so openly wounded by Billroth, the narrator turns from derogatory to sympathetic, and virtually shifts his view of the Burgtheater actor and even the Burgtheater into praising. |
The Lime Works | Thomas Bernhard | 1,973 | The story opens with a description of a woman’s brains scattered across the floor of an abandoned lime works, and a half-frozen man crouching on the ground nearby, covered in manure. From this first grotesque scene, Bernhard begins his story, a compelling tale of two people insidiously bound to each other, told through a hypnotic wave of voices – the people of the small Austrian town nearby (Sicking), the officials, the salesmen, the chimney sweeps, the local gossips, the couple themselves. The man, Konrad, is consumed with his work – a book that is to be both visionary and definitive, the ultimate treatise on the subject of hearing. His wife, a cripple, is the victim of his obsessive experiments: he whispers one phrase in her ear, over and over, hundreds of times, demanding from her impossible degrees of aural discrimination. She has no way of knowing, or no strength to tell herself, whether he is a deluded madman or a genius. For three decades, he has been waiting for the ideal moment, the perfect constellation of circumstances, to arise, so that he may begin writing down his conclusions. But he never begins, and he is now an old man. We watch as he compulsively invites his own ruin. We feel him creep from one moment to the next, terrified of failure. Suppose he started writing and then caught a cold? Suppose he finished and his tome was judged worthless? Or his wife destroyed it? Even amidst the total isolation of the lime works, where they live, he is continually distracted. He hallucinates about prowlers. He hoards bits of food for dreaded visitors. And she torments him. He must feed her, read to her, bring her cider from the deep cellar (one glass at the time), maintain her voluminous correspondence with servants he has long ago forgotten, try on a mitten she has been knitting and unravelling for years, tend the earaches she develops from constant experiments... until the monotony and heartlessness of their life together shatters in a bloodbath. |
The Duchess of Windsor | Diana Mitford | null | The American divorcée (Simpson) attracted media attention when she married Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. Due to the divisive political issue of the proposed marriage, the king was forced to abdicate the throne in order to pursue marriage with Simpson. The author (Mosley) was a confidante and neighbour of the Duchess. |
Castle Storm | Garry Kilworth | null | After discovering the second clue to the whereabouts of the humans lies at the famed Castle Storm, the outlaw weasels journey to the south of Welkin, where the castle lies, to discover more about the mysterious human evacuation. However, a cascade of rats is swarming down from the marshes in the north of the island to seize power from Prince Poynt. |
Gargoyles | Thomas Bernhard | 1,967 | The German title translates something like Confusion or Disturbance, but the American publisher chose Gargoyles, perhaps in order to render the array of human freaks the novel depicts to its very end. In fact, this is a singular, surreal study of the nature of humanity. One morning a doctor takes his son—an idealistic student of science and rationality—on his daily rounds through the grim mountainous Austrian countryside. They observe the rural grotesques they encounter -- from an innkeeper whose wife has been murdered to a crippled musical prodigy kept in a cage -- coping with physical misery, madness, and the brutality of the austere landscape. But when they meet the insomniac Prince Saurau in his castle at Hochgobernitz, his solitary, stationary mind takes over the rest of the novel in an uninterrupted obsessive paragraph. It's a hundred-page monologue by an eccentric, paranoid man, a relentlessly flowing cascade of words that is classic Bernhard: the furious logorrhea is a mesmeric rant, completing the stylistic formation of his art of exaggeration, where he uses metaphors of physical and mental illness to explore the decay of his homeland. |
Extinction | Thomas Bernhard | 1,986 | Extinction takes the form of the autobiographical testimony of Franz-Josef Murau, the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family. Murau lives in Rome in self-exile, obsessed and angry with his identity as an Austrian, and resolves never to return to the family estate of Wolfsegg. He is surrounded by a group of artistic and intellectual friends, and intends to continue living what he calls the Italianate way. When he hears of his parents' deaths, he finds himself master of Wolfsegg and must decide its fate. Murau has cut himself off from his family and sought to establish an intellectual life as a tutor in Rome. In the first half of the novel, he reflects on the spiritual, intellectual, and moral impoverishment of his family to his Roman student Gambetti. He only has respect for his Uncle Georg, who similarly cut himself off from the family and helped Murau to save himself. In the second section, he returns to his family’s estate, Wolfsegg, for the funeral, as well as to determine the disposal of the estate, which is now in his hands. Throughout the novel, Murau talks about the void that he has created for himself via exaggeration combined with understatement. Murau then incriminates all of art in this role of unjustified absolution. To Gambetti, the "great" of "great art" was just that; when he thinks on his villa in Wolfsegg, "great" comes to mean something new: criminal art that has the power to make people pardon themselves for mortal sins. Gambetti is Murau’s collaborator. His presence provides the mirror to the society of his parents, and reveals that Murau too has established an audience for himself that unknowingly endorses his obscure tactics. He stops speaking to Gambetti in the second half of the novel because Gambetti has been an agent in Murau’s self-deception. This in turn allows Murau to write his Extinction. |
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Odyssey | Isaac Asimov | 1,987 | A young man awakens in an emergency escape pod finding himself on the surface of an asteroid and having no memory of his identity or how he ended up in this situation. He adopts the name 'Derec' from the name on his space suit, which he later finds out is only the suit's manufacturer. He is soon rescued by a colony of robots who are mining the asteroid in search of something hidden there. Their mission is surrounded in the utmost secrecy such that Derec is not told what they searching for nor allowed to communicate with the outside world. However, the robots send a message to their commander asking what to do and continue their work. Derec has limited freedom to explore the subterranean operation and is amazed at the level of engineering design in the robots and their operation. Likewise, he begins to realize that he himself is well trained in robotics, both technically and psychologically (pertaining to the Three Laws of Robotics). Eventually, a passing alien pirate ship receives the robot's signal and attacks the colony. Due to the secrecy of the robot's mission, their orders dictate they must destroy themselves upon discovery. However, doing that would jeopardize Derec's life and thus the robots would be failing to obey the First Law of Robotics. Derec escapes to the surface of the asteroid using a modified 'augment' (augmented worksuit) and attempts to board the alien ship. While the alien ship bombards the asteroids' surface, the robots below are destroying themselves in the incinerator, but one robot is attempting to "save" Derec. Just before the robot is destroyed by the alien blasters, it finds the object of their search on the surface and bequeaths it to Derec, though Derec knows nothing of its function or importance. Derec is then captured by the aliens. On the alien ship, which is a compilation of smaller ships pieced together, he meets its captain, a ruthless humanoid named Aranimas, who is on a mission to procure robots for his own use. He apparently has little knowledge of robotics. In a trade for his life, Derec must build a robot for Aranimas, but is only supplied with random robototic parts that Aranimass has collected through his piracy, including the arm of the destroyed robot who gave Derec the object. Surmising the object's importance, Derec decides he must get it back from Aranimas and escape. During the construction of the robot, whom he names 'Alpha', Derec discovers and befriends another servant of Aranimass, a small, furry canine-like alien who he names 'Wolruf', since he cannot pronounce the real name. Together, they plan to mutiny against Aranimas with the help of Alpha by taking advantage of the fact that Alpha is bound by the Three Laws of Robotics and Aranimas is ignorant of that fact. They subdue Aranimas and gain access to the room where the object is hidden. While looking for it, Derec encounters another prisoner and is surprised to find that she is a human female who apparently knows him. But before she can tell him anything, he trips a booby trap protecting the object and falls unconscious. Derec awakens in a medical facility on a remote space station that is entirely operated by robots. Beside him is the female, Katherine. Derec is told they were the only two found and is remorseful that Wolruf has been left behind. Anxious to return to society, they learn through the Rockliffe Station manager, an off-station human, that the ship they arrived in (the part of Aranimas's monstrosity in which was the booby trapped room) has been seized to cover the cost of their medical bills and that the next supply ship to take them back to civilization is weeks away. Wanting to find the object, they venture out into the station looking for the hangar containing their ship. Upon finding the ship in an abandoned section, they discover the robots have removed the object. There they also discover Wolruf, who has been hiding on the station since their arrival and is starving due to the absence of food on a robotic installation. She informs Katherine and Derec that the object they are looking for is called the "Key of Perihelion" and is under heavy robot guard. It is a highly valuable object, but Aranimas could not get it to work. Using a First Law farce to draw the guards away from the Key, Derec steals it and escapes into an empty section of the station. Katherine and Wolruf meet him, with robots following close on their heels. Just as the door opens, Derec actives the Key and he and Katherine disappear into thin air, leaving Wolruf behind again with Alpha, who had opened the door. Katherine and Derec reappear on the top of a pyramid shaped building in the center of an expansive city. They descend the building's surface, hiding the Key in one of the holes they find as they climb down. It is immediately apparent that the city has peculiar properties in that buildings appear and disappear overnight and the entire population is composed of robots. However, the robots had been aware of one other human in the city, and that person had recently been murdered. Because of the First Law, the robots concluded that one or other of the only other humans in the city, Derec and Katherine, must have committed the murder. The story ends with both of them being murder suspects and the series continues in Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Suspicion. |
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Suspicion | Isaac Asimov | 1,987 | Derec, who has amnesia, and Katherine have been transported to mysterious planet containing an experimental city entirely populated by robots. The only other human that had resided in the city was murdered several days before their arrival, which was by transport using a mysterious device called the Key of Perihelion. Because they wish to keep secret how they arrived in Robot City, the robots assume either Derec or Katherine committed the murder. Of course, a robot couldn't do so due to the First Law. Thus, Derec and Katherine must clear their names. Meanwhile, the city is growing and changed at an alarming rate. Buildings literally change right before their eyes. Derec learns the material the robots and the city itself is made of is the same highly advanced material that the robots of the asteroid he woke up on were made of, therefore connecting the two. The city is also plagued with nightly thunderstorms which produce a tremendous amount of rain. The city's reservoir is about to overflow, which would destroy the city. While investigating the murder, they find a room at the top of the Compass Tower, the building on which they appeared when using the Key. The room is clearly used by the creator of Robot City to watch over the city without interfering or even being noticed by the rest of the city. While searching the Central Core's data with a security-free computer terminal in the room Derec secretly learns Katherine's name is an assumed name and is angered at her deceit. He also learns that the Central Core refers to him as David 1 while referring to the dead man as David 2, adding to his theory that none of his experiences since he woke up are merely coincidence. Derec begins to believe the death of David, the rain, and the city's grown are interconnected. Derec and Katherine decide to split up to speed up their investigations. Derec learns that the mining of building material is causing tremendous amounts of dust and that the building and changing of the city is creating tremendous amounts of heat and water vapor. Together, they are causing the rains, which will soon destroy the city. However, the city has perceived an alien presence and is in a heightened security mode, which is the cause of the rapid growth of the city. Since the presence was registered by the Central Core at the time David was murdered, they must solve the murder and convince it there is no alien presence to get the city to shut down, thus saving it. Katherine finds the body of David still in the enclosed room formed when he died and has a utility robot cut a hole into it. She goes in to find that David looks exactly like Derec and faints. When she wakes back in their quarters she complains of a headache, but is willing to return to the body's location with Derec. When they arrive it has been removed, assumingly by the clean up robots, and the room is empty. Derec theorizes it was pathogens in human blood (from a mundane cut on David's shoeless foot) that the Central Core was interpreting as an alien presence because of its lack of data on normal human blood borne pathogens. To test it, he cuts himself on the jagged edge of the hole in the wall and lets the blood drip on the floor. As expected, the wall responds and seals them in as it did David. While they wait to be cut out, Katherine explains her real name is Ariel and she is the daughter of a wealthy family from Aurora (planet). Her mother was funding the research of a Dr. Avery and this city is most likely his experiment. Also, she has an incurable disease (contracted from a spacer) and was disowned by her family and banished from the planet. She was searching for a cure when she met Derec in passing (she had earlier revealed to Derec his real name is David). Later, she was captured by Aranimass. No explanation is given to why she lied about her identity or kept this knowledge secret. The robots arrive and begin cutting them out. Derec quickly realizes the cutting process is releasing the carbon monoxide in the building material and stops the cutting. He explains the murder wasn't really a murder and that David had died of carbon monoxide poisoning from being cut out when he was trapped. Also, Katherine's headache was also caused by the carbon monoxide when the hole was cut for her to see the body. The robots realize this and agree Derec and Katherine, now Ariel, are innocent. Derec rushes off to tell the Central Core about pathogens to stop the out of control growth and, upset at her conversation with Derec, Ariel rushes to the Compass Tower to retrieve the Key. As the rain starts falling, Ariel climbs down from the top to where Derec hid the Key only to find it gone. A robot climbs up from the bottom to protect her from falling and the rain by clamping itself to the structure around her. Meanwhile, Derec helps the robots figure out a way to divert that night's rain runoff so it won't destroy the city. The next morning he informs the Central Core about the pathogens and the city drops its security level, thus stopping the cycle of rain-causing dust and heat. Ariel recovers from her night in the rain and tells Derec that the Key is missing. Without the Key, Derec and Ariel are stranded in Robot City with no hope of rescue. |
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Cyborg | Isaac Asimov | 1,987 | Derec and Ariel are stranded on a mystery planet in an experimental city entirely populated by robots. Because Robot City has no spaceport, space ships or any way to radio for help, their only hope is to find the Key of Perihelion, an advanced transporting device that brought them to Robot City, and use it to transport elsewhere. While searching the city for clues, they learn the robots have taken the Key to a large building, but they cannot gain access into the building. Ariel distracts the security robot while Derec sneaks in to and learns the robots have dismantled the original Key in order produce more. Derec is caught trying to steal one of the newly manufactured Keys and is taken to the supervisor robot. However, he was still able to hide one on his person. They learn a Key only works with the being (robot, human, or alien) who has initialized it and the robots are initializing all the Keys for robots. In searching the Central Core for other options of self-rescue, they discover there are now three other unknown beings on the planet. Through interviewing random robots near sightings, they determine two of the three are a robot and a child, who is most likely starving due to the absence of food in an all robot city. They begin using their food replicator to produce food smells in hopes to attract the hungry visitor. It also involves a First Law priority to get the robots to help them search for the other inhabitants. The third being is Jeff, a human who is the only survivor of a passenger ship that was attempting an emergency landing on the planet. Robot City's medical robots, who have advanced medical knowledge but erroneously lack basic human anatomy knowledge, weren't able to save Jeff's body. First Law dictated they save his brain by transplanting it into a robot body, thus creating a cyborg. They then froze his body to repair it when they get the human anatomy data they need. When Jeff wakes up and is made aware of this fact, he panics and escapes without the medical team being able to finish their tests. Jeff quickly begins displaying psychological problems such as paranoia and anger impulses. He determines he is going to take over and rule Robot City with his superior strength, due to his robot body, yet no obligation to follow the Three Laws of Robotics. The medical team organizes a city wide search for Jeff, but his outward appearance makes it easy for him to blend anonymously into the robot crowd. While exploring the city, Jeff's robot nose smells Derec and Ariel's food and follows the smells to them. In a fit of paranoid rage, he strikes them. Other robots, unaware of the robot being a "human," see this attack as a malfunctioning robot breaking the First Law and attempt to seize him, but Jeff escapes. Derec and Ariel are then involved in the capture of Jeff for their safety. They fear Jeff is in danger due to a chemical imbalance his brains life support system which increases the city's robots priority in searching for Jeff. Later, Jeff happens across the other pair of beings in the city who is Alpha and Wolruf. As Derec and Ariel surmised, Wolruf is starving. Jeff takes sympathy on the non-human and orders a city robot to feed Wolruf, but to not to report it is doing so. Also, Jeff calls Derec and Ariel and attempts to convince Ariel that she and Derec should do the transplant as well. This strikes a chord with Ariel due to her fatal disease. Jeff escapes detection several other times, but the medical team's search net is closing in. Jeff is finally caught and identified by his lack of a radio comlink and his failure to accurately reproduce the behavior of a robot following the Three Laws. It is confirmed a hormone imbalance due to the robot's naivety of human chemistry has caused his erratic behavior. By scanning Derec's body, the medical robots are able to repair Jeff's human body and re-transplant his brain back into it. Because of Alpha's lack of a radio comlink, he was also singled out during the search for Jeff. This brings Alpha back in contact with Derec and Ariel, who then learn of Wolruf's presence on the planet as well. Alpha also informs Derec that during Jeff's capture, he has been renamed to Mandelbrot when his special arm, which came from a robot similar to those in Robot City, became fully functional. Alpha, now Mandelbrot, informs them that the two arrived in a small ship taken from the Rockliffe Space Station and used it to follow the radio signal left by the Key. Thus, there is a working ship they can use to escape. They are disappointed to find the ship is a one person escape pod. They decide Jeff is the one who should use it to leave once his body has recuperated, despite Ariel's impending mortality. By now Derec and Ariel infer they have feelings for each other, but do not discuss it. Jeff leaves Robot City promising to send a rescue team when he reaches civilization. Again, Derec and Ariel are stranded in Robot City. |
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Prodigy | Isaac Asimov | 1,988 | Derec, Ariel, their alien companion Wolruf, and Derec's robot Mandelbrot are still stranded on a mystery planet in an experimental city entirely populated by uniquely designed robots. Robot City has no spaceport, space ships or any way to radio for help, and the Keys of Perihelion being produced by the robots will only work with robots, not humans or aliens. Thus, they have all exhausted their options of escape and are searching for other methods to get off the otherwise uninhabited planet. Though the city is designed by the robots to support a human population, its design had been merely functional and utilitarian, until a building suddenly appears on the horizon that starkly contrasts the city's mundane architecture. It is a brightly light, tetragonal pyramid and seemly serves no purpose other than an artistic one. This is exceptionally odd since neither of the humans designed it and robots are logically incapable of the abstract thinking needed for producing art. Derec, Ariel, Wolruf, and Mandelbrot rush to see it up close to find almost every other robot in the city has done the same. This fact produces a double conundrum as robots are also incapable of appreciating art or being emotionally moved by it, yet there they are. Being a robotist, Derec is very interested in talking to the robot designer to learn why it created the building the way it did. On the way, Derec interacts with several of the robots in the crowd to find they, too, are showing signs of illogical thoughts. Robots are beginning to adopt names like Harry and Benny instead of M334. They are also beginning to take interest in learning about human artist concepts such as humor and music. Furthermore, they are beginning to interact with each other that could be viewed as hostile, such as Harry informing a utility robot as being fat due to its large size. Derec requests to run diagnostics on Harry to further learn about its state of mind. Derec finds this all extremely odd and begins to theorize this is the natural trend of intelligent beings within a civilization. Normally robots in all other human worlds are treated as objects and slaves for working purposes only. The Three Laws of Robotics underscore such a human-robot relationship. In Robot City, there are no humans to keep the robotic mentality at the slave level, so their minds are expanding as one would expect an intelligent being to do. Derec eventually finds and speaks to the building's designer, a robot named Lucius, who is speaking with the supervisor robot Canute. Canute informs Lucius that the building is hindering the city's efficiency and that it will be removed immediately. Obviously Canute has not been affected by the mental renaissance of the robots. Derec demands the building stays and dismisses Canute's opinions. Derec learns that Lucius's mental state was sparked during the city's previous replication crisis. He made the connection that the other robots were mindlessly performing their duties to the city, which was in turn producing effects that were going to destroy the city. They were not able to realize if they stopped their duties whose purpose was to save the city that they would, then, actually save the city. This abstract-thought break-through led to him designing his building. Derec requested to run diagnostics on Lucius as well. Ariel's disease has been progressing and is beginning to affect her mind. Wolruf attempts to console her as she goes through hallucinations, but the urgency to get off the planet to medical attention increases. Later that night, during a hallucination, she jumps into the reservoir and finds Lucius's body, which has been smashed up and its logic circuits removed, effectively a robot murder. Distraught, Derec believes it was Canute who disabled Lucius. Though the Three Laws of Robotics don't specifically forbid a robot destroying another robot (in fact, it would be required it in some scenarios), it is illogical that a robot would do so when it wasn't required by the First or Second Laws. Derec feels that he can teach Canute a lesson if he can get Canute to confess rather than directly asking if it destroyed Lucius (which Canute would not be able to lie about to a human). Derec devises a plan to trick Canute into confessing using the city's new interest in human art forms and the budding "emotional" state of its robots. He hopes that in reproducing the Shakespeare play Hamlet and casting Canute as the part of the uncle, they can "guilt" Canute into confessing as the uncle is quilted into confessing in the play itself. A theater is built and many robots show up to watch the play. However, the plan does not work and at the end production, Canute does not confess anything. Furthermore, Canute states the play was a failure due the robot audience's inability to provide the proper positive feedback (clapping). However, when one robot learns clapping is the proper response, the rest follow suit. At this point another human arrives in the theater and is very irate. He demands the identification of the non-natives and why they interfering with his experience. They realize he is Dr. Avery, the city's creator. A man obsessed with his work and slightly paranoid, he has little interest in their plight and informs them they will be subjected to drug induced questioning to ascertain their secrets. He remotely disables Mandelbrot so it cannot help, but Derec, Ariel and Wolruf escape anyway. They are quickly caught and taken to Dr. Avery's lab. Derec has an enlightening dream and when he wakes, he is strapped to a table and Dr. Avery, seeming satisfied with the truth of their story, begins speaking to him. However, Dr. Avery explains he has no interest of helping them get off the planet or Ariel to medical help. In fact, he seems to have some other plans for them. Derec is able to conclude Dr. Avery arrived via spaceship, thus a means of escape is available. Canute is in the laboratory with them and when Dr. Avery leaves for a while, he orders Canute not to release him unless Dr. Avery is in the room. Derec begins talking to Canute about his dream and its relation to the events of Lucius. He finally strikes a chord and Canute confesses and learns its lesson. Ariel and Wolruf wake up and they convince Canute to release Ariel through a technicality in Dr. Avery's order only to not release Derec. They are able to turn Mandelbrot back on. Canute informs them where the ship is and they all escape to it. Once in space, they find there are no navigational charts on the ship so they decide to retrace the ship's last hyperspace hop to a nearby star, Kappa Whale, which is merely a hyperspace relay hop location. Once there they discover hyper wave radio isn't working properly. However, due to the way they space travel and hyperspace hops work, another ship is expected to make a relay hop to that star and they would be able to get navigation charts from it. Then they would be on their way after having to wait only a few days. Wolruf then opts for some food. Upon opening the food replicator, out falls a Key of Perihelion. |
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Refuge | Isaac Asimov | 1,988 | Derec, Ariel, their alien companion Wolruf, and Derec's robot Mandelbrot are still waiting in Dr. Avery's ship at the hyperspace relay star, Kappa Whale. Several weeks have passed since they arrived and no ship has shown up from which they could obtain navigation charts. Attempts to fix the hyperwave radio have proven futile due the lack of knowledge of its workings. Boredom is setting in as well as an increased severity of Ariel's sickness. Something must be done. Wolruf and Mandelbrot both agree Derec and Ariel should use the Key of Perihelion found on the ship to transport off the ship. Though, they don't know where they will be transported to, they assume back to Robot City. Upon activating the Key, they are transported to a small 2-room apartment, obviously not in Robot City. An old model robot in the apartment explains they are on Earth. Since Spacers aren't generally accepted on Earth, they immediately decide to make their way to a spaceport and leave for a Spacer world and medical care for Ariel. However, the nearest spaceport is in another city. R. David, the robot who was left there by Dr. Avery, proceeds to prepare them identification and ration tags so they can move about the massive enclosed Earth city with relative anonymity. He also explains a few of the social cultures they will experience while on Earth. Derec and Ariel leave the apartment to explore ways to get to the spaceport and immediately begin to experience the differences in culture between Spacer worlds and Earth, primarily the population density which far exceeds that of Spacer worlds and their comfort levels. Almost immediately, they begin to feel claustrophobic in the completely enclosed city. When they eat at the community kitchen, which holds upwards of 10,000 hungry Earthers at once, they truly begin to grasp Earth's population and are in awe of the incredible systems needed to feed, house, and cloth it. On the transport system, they ask for directions to the train station and their Spacer accents earn them a warning to avoid the yeast farmers. They continued to ride the transport system and eventually arrive in Yeast Town where they again ask for directions. This time their accents gain them attention of several yeast farmers who begin to chase them with anger in their voices. Derec and Ariel flee, but get cornered. In desperation, Derec activates the Key of Perihelion and they transport back to the apartment. They venture back out and, with directions from R. David, reach the train station. There they see that the train is completely enclosed (Earthers prefer not knowing they are in wide-open spaces) and decide they couldn't handle being in a small car with no windows for 12 hours. The next day they go to the library to research other methods and discover transport trucks which drive on roads in the open between cities. They figure they could learn to drive a truck and steal one fairly easily since Earthers wouldn't expect that sort of crime from the population. They go to driving school where they are successful in learning to drive due their skills as space ship operators. Then they make their way to the docks scope out how to steal a truck, but are discovered and chased off. Though they escape, they are very tired and retire to the apartment. The more of Earth's culture they experience, the more they begin to appreciate the Earth people and how they live. They begin seeing similarities in Earth and Spacer culture and begin to accept that aspects of Earth's culture even exceed that of Spacer culture. Areil's disease has finally climaxed. Her lack of appetite, fatigue, and lack of concentration are worse than ever. Upon their return to the apartment, R. David immediately notices her health as drastically changed and urges that it take her to the hospital due to its First Law obligation. They submit to the notion they will not get off Earth to a Spacer world in time and decide to go to an Earth hospital. The hospital staff is suspicious of their story and Spacer accents, but help Ariel anyway. They eventually diagnose Ariel with Amnemonic Plague and begin treating her. It is a disease that, once it has infected the mind, is very hard to cure. They tell Derec that as advanced as it has progressed that it's not 100% she will make it, but there is hope. Because of their being Spacers, the medical staff insists on testing Derec for diseases that would be benign to Earthers but fatal to Spacers. Despite the prophylactic given to them by R. David (designed by Dr. Avery), he submits to the test. Derec is again impressed with Earth and is ashamed that he assumed they would need to get to a Spacer world for proper medical help. The reality is Earth hospitals deal with much more disease and injury than any Spacer hospital. The test results show he is healthy, but indicate he had once suffered from Amnemonic Plague, too, explaining his memory loss. In efforts to replace Ariel's memory once she recovers, Derec begins encoding everything he remembers about her. Those encodings, along with encodings done by the medical robots, are used to kick start her memories when she wakes up. While Ariel is recovering, Derec is questioned by the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation about what two Spacers were doing on Earth. Derec is able to convince the agent they were students studying human behavior patterns and their anonymity was important since Earthers would have treated the Spacers differently if they knew. They both agree that now "their cover was blown," Derec and Ariel would leave Earth. As Ariel recovers, Derec begins to fall ill. Nightmares of Robot City, lack of appetite, and fatigue cause him to lose weight and strength. He eventually becomes aware of the Chemfets in him, which are microscopic circuit boards Dr. Avery injected him with and they are multiplying in his blood. Also, an implant in his brain has been trying to communicate with them. He realizes all of this at the point the implant and the Chemfets first are able to communication. When Ariel is well enough to move, they request to visit the outside and are granted the odd request due to the fact they are Spacers and would be physiologically benefited by such a venture (as opposed to an Earther who would essentially go crazy). Outside, accompanied by a medical robot, Derec goes into a seizure and the robot runs for help. The seizure subsides and Derec explains they must return to Robot City and get Dr. Avery to reverse the process. They use the Key to return to the apartment. Once there, R. David tells them Dr. Avery has a spaceship at the spaceport in New York and they can fly there fairly easily They choose this method and escape Earth with no problems. Once in space, they prepare to return to Kappa Whale to join Wolruf and Mandelbrot again and to continue to Robot City along the trajectory they took from Robot City to the relay spot. Once away from Earth's space, they are attacked by a ship that turns out to be Aranimass. He was able to follow the radio signature produced when a Key fires. Derec and Ariel decide to ram Aranimass' ship then use the Key to escape to Earth. A third ship enters the scuffle which turns out to be Wolruf and Mandelbrot who had followed the same radio signature. They eventually destroys Aranimass' ship, but there is severe damage to the other two ships rendering all three almost useless. Aranimass escapes in the command part of his ship. While scouting the wreckage of Aranimass' ship, they find a Robot City robot holding a Double Key of Perihelion. Unlike all of the Keys Derek and Ariel have used thus far, it seems that one of the Double Keys can have its ending location programmed. This means this Double Key would be used to go somewhere and then return, probably to Robot City, using the second of the set. Since a robot had it, the Key is coded to be used only by a robot. Thus, Mandelbrot takes the Key and secures Wolruf, Derec, and Ariel with his special arm and activates the key. They arrive back on top of the Compass Tower overlooking Robot City. |
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Perihelion | Isaac Asimov | 1,988 | Derec, Ariel, their alien companion Wolruf, and Derec's robot Mandelbrot have returned to Robot City to convince Dr. Avery to remove the Chemfets he injected into Derec's blood while they were in his custody. From the top the Compass Tower they descend into the apartment on the uppermost floor. There they use the computer terminal to begin their search for the location of Dr. Avery, but have no luck. Derec's condition is worsening quickly, so it is decided that Mandelbrot and Wolruf will enter the city and try to gain useful information. Wolruf being non-human and Mandelbrot being a robot allows them a bit of anonymity since Derek and Ariel would most certainly be noticed and reported. Mandelbrot obtains a work assignment from the Central Computer and learns that all work is being automated to the point where it can be performed by "function robots", robots without positronic brains, after which only a skeleton crew of robots would be needed. All positronic robots have also been programmed with "Migration Programming" which is executed upon completion of their tasks, but Mandelbrot is unable to learn what Migration Programming is. While Mandelbrot and Wolruf are away, Derec gets even worse, and Ariel decides they can't wait for Mandelbrot and Wolruf's return and must leave the apartment now. Moving around seems to ease some of Derec's symptoms. As the descend into the Compass Tower, they run into Euler, a robot they met the first time they were in Robot City. He acts in an odd way and attempts to restrain them, but they get away. As they exit Compass Tower, they are immediately captured by Hunter Robots and placed on a truck for transport. Mandelbrot arrives and convinces the driver to let him drive instead. Mandelbrot swerves several times putting the Hunters off balance allowing Derec and Ariel to push them out of the vehicle. They escape with the truck and find a hiding spot. Soon afterwards, Jeff returns in a spacecraft to make good in his offer to help Derek and Ariel escape. He lands near the Compass Tower, but is immediately taken into custody by a Hunter. Mandelbrot, seeing the landing, arrives in time to save Jeff from the Hunter and the two make their getaway. After meeting with Derek and Ariel and being updated on the situation, they decide to board Jeff's ship and search for Dr. Avery from orbit. Despite the Hunters having anticipated this move, they are able to avoid capture and make it to orbit. From orbit they see that Robot City now covers the entire planet. They find a small group of farm fields, however, and assume that is food being grown for Dr. Avery, currently the only human inhabitant, and that his lair must be near them. Upon landing, Mandelbrot and Wolruf debark while Jeff take the three humans back into orbit to wait. Mandelbrot and Wolruf, find the city all but abandoned in the area. Apparently, almost the entire robot population has executed their Migration Programming and left. Wolruf makes it to the woods near the fields, but is being pursued by Hunters. Mandelbrot fakes a defect and allows itself to be taken to a repair facility. Upon leaving the facility, a rogue robot general alert is raised, so Hunters are back on its trail. While waiting in orbit, Derec's condition continues to deteriorate and Jeff and Ariel decide to land and find Dr. Avery for themselves. They land near the field and exit quickly. Once in the field, they decide the best way to interrupt the Migration Programming of the city's robots is to commit a crime since the robots have clearly shown they have difficulty dealing with them. They stop a robot and use Derec's condition to convince it that the robot had harmed him. The robot shuts down due to its belief it had broken the first of the Three Laws of Robotics, the harming of a human. Deceiving this robot only buys them time and soon the Hunters are on them again. Jeff makes a break for it alone attempting to distract them since Derec has deteriorated to the point where he can't run or even move. Derek and Ariel attempt to hide in the field and find what looks like a vent leading down into the ground. At the risk of being caught, the jump into it and slide down, apparently into Dr. Avery's lair. Once at the bottom, Derec can no longer continue, so Ariel does on her own. As she continues, she enters a bizarre maze filled with likenesses of Derec and others she has encountered during her time in Robot City. She makes her way through the maze and eventually enters a chamber reminiscent of a medieval king's dining hall. There she finds Dr. Avery. Though she doesn't remember Dr. Avery, it is clear they have met before. Soon, the others are brought to the chamber by Hunters; Jeff, Derec, Wolruf, and Mandelbrot. It is revealed that Derec real name is actually David Avery, Dr. Avery's son. Ariel and David (Derec) had once had a relationship which Dr. Avery didn't approve of. Dr. Avery had inflicted them both with Amnemonic Plague and split them up in order to end the relationship. A plan that obviously didn't work. Furthermore, he injected Derec with the Chemfets so he would become the eventual ruler of the Robot City robots, but not only the robots in Robot City, but the robots of all of the Robot Cities. It turns out the Migration Programming is sending all of the robots in Robot City to other planets via the "Keys of Perihelion" to begin building Robot Cities everywhere, invading and colonizing every planet they can find. During this conversation, the Chemfets finally finish their process within Derec. Not only is he physically normal again, he finds that he has complete control of all of the robots of Robot City. With this power he easily halts the Migration Programming process and recalls the robots. This enrages Dr. Avery and before Derec can order a Hunter to subdue him, he produces a "Key of Perihelion" from his pocket and disappears. Tired and happy, their adventure over, Derec finally kisses Ariel. |
The Ant and the Elephant | Bill Peet | null | A stranded ant is having trouble finding help because other animals refuse to help him. An elephant notices the ant and helps him. After that, the elephant helps more animals. The ant is the only animal that said thanks to the elephant. When the elephant has helped out everyone, he falls into a ravine and he can't get out. When he is ready to give up and die, a horde of ants carry him to safety. |
The Crimson Labyrinth | Yusuke Kishi | 2,006 | The Crimson Labyrinth is a thriller about nine strangers who find themselves as actors in an elaborate snuff film from which only one is permitted to emerge alive. |
Yes | Thomas Bernhard | 1,978 | :;Characters: :1. The narrator, a scientist :2. Moritz, an estate agent, and his family :3. A Swiss engineer :4. His wife, a Persian born in Shiraz This novel is about suicide, a topic that permeates overtly or covertly all of Bernhard’s work. A Persian woman is the central character of narration, and the narrator prepares for her suicide by his own preoccupation with suicide. This motif of the surrogate victim is clearly established in the novel's opening sentence (see excerpt below), where the narrator describes himself as in the process of "dumping" his problems on his friend Moritz. Later, he will persist in making these revelations even though he recognizes that they have "wounded" Moritz. Similarly, he will underline the Persian woman's role as a surrogate victim when he refers to her as the ideal "sacrificial mechanism". One could easily perceive that the woman fascinates the narrator, who finds in her a suitable companion in his solitary walks into the nearby forest, where he obsesses her with interminable disquisitions and philosophical rants. She is "an utterly regenerating person, that is an utterly regenerating walking and thinking and talking and philosophising partner such as I had not had for years". Gradually the narrator goes back in time and recollects his first meetings with the Persian woman, uncovering a universe of loneliness where the only existential act left is confession. However, self-exposure not always engenders a benefit. Whilst the narrator undergoes a positive reaction, becoming once again attached to life and thus discarding suicide, the Persian woman is unable to unravel the knots of her painful social isolation and says a definitive "yes" to annihilation. Literally, the woman arrived in this comically benighted corner of Upper Austria because her companion, a Swiss engineer, had chosen it as the ideal location in which to build his new house, right in the middle of a nearby thick forest. But the reader recognizes this realistic motivation as simply a pretext for arranging the sacrificial death that Bernhard intends for her. We glimpse this archetypal pattern from the very beginning of his narrative, when the narrator describes the woman as "regenerating" and perceives the arrival of the couple as signifying his "redemption". While the narrator himself has never been able to act on his own suicidal impulses, it was his insinuating words, as we learn in the novel's closing sentence, that provoked the woman's suicide. After she has committed suicide (by throwing herself in front of a cement truck), he remembers discussing the frequent suicide of young people and asking her if she would kill herself one day, to which she replies, in the novel's closing word, "Yes". |
American Sandwich: Great Eats from All 50 States | null | null | Mercuri said, "I first look for a sandwich for which the state is known. The second thing I do is look for a product that's used in sandwiches, a product for which the state is known. And the third criteria I use -- and this is what happened with Kansas -- is I look for historical events that tie into an interesting restaurant". The book has famous sandwich recipes from all over the United States. It is illustrated with historic postcards, license plates, and photographs. Some of the sandwiches included are Colorado's Denver sandwich, Florida's Cuban sandwich, Louisiana's Muffuletta, Montana's Buffalo burgers, Arizona's Navajo taco, and New York's New York Reuben. |
The Mardi Gras Mystery | Carolyn Keene | 1,988 | In The Mardi Gras Mystery, Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, is invited to spend the vacation with Brian Seaton, an Emerson College friend. On their way to the Seaton Mansion, Brian stops at Warren Tyler's house to pick up his father, Bartholomew Seaton, and at the same time shows Ned a portrait of his late mother, Danielle Seaton, by the famous artist Lucien Beaulieu. The painting is in the possession of Mr. Tyler since he found it in a barn he bought. The friends leave for Seaton Mansion or "The Bat Hallow". They wear fancy dress for the Mardi Gras celebration. Later that evening they go to the Silver Yacht Club. That night the portrait is stolen. The prime suspect is Mr. Seaton, who is supposed to have wanted his wife's portrait. All the evidence points to him: he was wearing a bat costume, like the thief, and he was missing at the crucial time, around 10:00 p.m. Nancy cannot resist the challenge of the mystery. Her investigation leads to the French Quarter where she sees a woman who looks like Danielle except that her face is scarred. She is shocked and hypothesizes that Danielle could have survived the sailboat accident. Later she finds out the woman is Mariel Devereaux, whose father Max is an art forger. Nancy concludes that Max used his daughter as a model for the painting because of her almost perfect resemblance to Danielle. He purposely left it in the barn so that it would be found by Mr. Tyler, Danielle's suitor and Bartholomew's rival. His plan was to steal his own painting and ransom it for a million dollars. The money was to pay for his daughter's plastic surgery. |
Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues | Michael Crichton | 1,970 | In order to hook-up with his new California girlfriend, a Harvard graduate involves her in an ill-fated plan to smuggle a suitcase full of marijuana bricks from Berkeley to Boston. |
Carrot Cake Murder: A Hannah Swensen Mystery | null | null | It is summer in Lake Eden, Minnesota and everyone is very excited with the family reunion that Hannah's partner Lisa has prepared coming up shortly. Lisa's Uncle Gus has made an unexpected return after a 30 year absence with expensive jewelry, clothes and a new car. Uncle Gus is immediately the center of attention at the reunion with no doubt. It is up to Hannah Swensen, the owner of The Cookie Jar bakery, to provide the treats. Hannah bakes one of her specialties, her carrot cake which is a big hit. Gus is impressed with Hannah's cake and asks her for another platter, but the next day as the pictures for the family reunion are being taken, everyone notices that there is one person missing. As Hannah goes out to search for Gus, she finds him over by the bar at the pavilion with two pieces of Hannah's carrot cake by his side, dead stabbed with an ice pick! It is up to Hannah to solve the mystery of the murder. It seems like Grandpa Jack might be blamed for killing Gus because of his Alzheimer's. Hannah thinks that he is not responsible for the murder, so she tries to prove that he is innocent. The book also has recipes. |
Woundlicker | null | null | The story is narrated by a disagreeable misfit and heavy drinker called Fletcher Fee who works in a car wash at the Stormont government building. Some days after witnessing the violent abuse of an 18-year-old called Molly Duddy, Fee finds a listening device secreted in one of the government's black Mercedes cars which he is cleaning. He begins defining his character to the device, informing it and the reader that he is the product of a violent marriage between a Catholic father and a Protestant mother. Ultimately, Fee explains, he plans to break free from the shackles of a divided society. He develops a mild obsession with Molly, whom he refers to as Wee Blondie, as well as a plan to befriend her. During a protest, overzealous police shoot Fee's only friend, a Muslim colleague called Karim. The killing, which gets second place in a news media obsessed with Northern Ireland politics, spurs 25-year-old Fee towards a dangerous and violent form of revenge. His targets are politicians and paramilitaries from both traditions in Northern Ireland, Loyalist and Republican. The police, as well as both sides of the polarised community, are soon baffled as to who is carrying out these murders because they do not fit the traditional template of killing in Northern Ireland. After each murder, Fee returns to work and gets back in to the car. There he describes what he has done and attempts to explain why he did it. After a savage and public double-killing which follows Fee's first sexually-charged meeting with Molly, he flees as the police try and fail miserably to track him down. The final chapter contains an official government response denying that it or any of its agents were aware of Fee or of his activities before his final act. It also contains a denial, aimed at a suspicious Press, insisting that the government played no part in facilitating Fee's escape. Rumours from Stormont had suggested that unscrupulous powers had viewed his attacks as a way of getting both sides to refocus on the issue at hand, by way of a common enemy. However the reader is already aware that all of Fee's words are a transcription from secret government recordings in which the protagonist is codenamed Woundlicker. In a follow up police operation, a letter from Fee is found in Molly's house suggesting that she join him as he begins to make a new life for himself. Molly, like Fee, is nowhere to be found. |
Five Go Off to Camp | Enid Blyton | 1,948 | Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timothy the dog (the Famous Five) are planning to go camping in a moor with the absent minded and insect loving Mr. Luffy, a teacher at Julian and Dick's school. When they arrive at camp they find that their camping site is close to a farm, and that several old train tracks run under the moors, some of them are unused. They soon make friends with a boy named Jock, who lives at the farm with his mother and stepfather, the farm owners. While exploring the moor, the Five find a railway yard and a tunnel that are apparently abandoned. A watchman called woden leg Sam tells them that "Spook trains" travel along those tracks before chasing them away. The children visit the farm the next day and tell Jock about the spook trains. They are surprised to find that most of the farm labourers are not working properly although Jock's stepfather, Mr. Andrews, has supplied the farm with a lot of expensive equipment and vehicles. When Mr. Andrews hears about the spook trains, he warns the children to stay away from the railway yard, and tries to prevent Jock from meeting the Five over the next few days. Julian and Dick secretly set off with Jock the next two nights to watch for the spook train, leaving the girls behind. They find that there is indeed a mysterious train coming from and back into the tunnel. George is infuriated when she finds that the boys have left them behind and goes off with Timothy, but accidentally falls inside the tunnel through a ventilation shaft and finds the train there. Meanwhile, the boys explore the tunnel while Anne waits outside, but are captured by some men led by Mr. Andrews. Anne runs off to find Mr. Luffy. George, who had been hiding inside the train, rescues the boys, and realising that the train is used for smuggling, they try to find a way out of the tunnel. They are recaptured, but Anne arrives with Mr. Luffy and the police to free them. The criminals are arrested, and the Famous Five return to the farm, while Jock is delighted at the adventure. |
Five on a Secret Trail | Enid Blyton | 1,956 | George is worried as her dog, Timmy, has hurt his ear. She pays a visit to the vet, and he tells her to place a round cardboard collar on Timmy to prevent him from scratching the bad ear. George is annoyed when everyone starts teasing Timmy because of the collar, and she goes to the end of Carters Lane on the common to camp alone, free from people who laughed at Timmy. She also leaves a note telling her family where she had gone, and tells them to send her cousin Anne to the place if she was willing to come. When Anne comes to Kirrin Cottage and asks for George, Aunt Fanny tells her about Timmy wearing the collar and George being annoyed. So she leaves for the common. She goes there, only to find nobody. Then suddenly George signals to her. They both discuss about the camp. Anne asks her where the camp is, and George says that she planned it near a cold spring and an old cottage. Next, when George asks Anne about Julian and Dick, who were very adventurous as usual, she replies that they have some kind of an educational tour. George is very disappointed. George and Anne meet a boy who is the son of an archaeologist. He has a small, black and white, one-eyed, adorable mongrel called Jet. They ask him why he was there and he tells them that the area he was digging was an old Roman camp. He shows them some of his interesting finds. He asks them to promise that they wouldn't be disturbing him again. They promise him but on the condition that he shouldn't be wandering into their own camp too. Then they have their meals and start to sleep, but Anne is woken up by pangs of thirst. She goes to the spring to have a drink, but she is lost and goes towards the old ruined cottage. She hears some sinister voices and sees some lights from the cottage. She comes back with the help of Timmy and tells George about what she saw in the morning. George is surprised and excited. The next day they see the boy in their camp. George asks him why he had broken his promise. The boy tells her that he had made no promise. The girls are most annoyed. That night they face a storm and have no choice other than taking shelter in the old cottage. They lie down with Timmy and in the middle of the night Anne sees three or four figures outlined in the lightning. She tells George but George tells her that they were just trees. But when the next streak of lightning came, they saw a figure of a man which had come close to the cottage, looking through the window. After the storm the girls reach their camp and the next morning they are fresh and happy. They later get the news of Julian and Dick coming to Kirrin Cottage. George is most happy. When they reach the camp, George informs them about the cottage and also the boy. The Five walk off together and they see the boy beside a bush reading. The girls inquire of Jet and the boy replies Jet was never with him. Then Julian and Dick search the cottage but they find nothing unusual. They decide to visit the cottage during the night and hide and watch whether there was anything queer about the cottage. They also find that the strange behavior of the "boy" was because there were twins, Guy and Harry Lawdler. But Julian and Dick discover that the cottage is not abandoned after all... |
Five Go to Billycock Hill | Enid Blyton | 1,957 | Camping again, this time on Billycock Hill, near the farm of Toby, a boy from Julian and Dick's school. Toby was very proud of Jeff, his cousin and thought he was a hero.When Toby's Cousin Jeff, a British Air Force pilot, flies off late in a stormy night with the newest aircraft made by British army which is full of secrets. The five are stunned. The media tells that the Jeff has flown away and people in the world too think Jeff is a traitor.Could Jeff really be a spy? But the five and Toby don't think he is a traitor. Will the famous five solve this mystery? |
Five on Finniston Farm | Enid Blyton | 1,960 | In this novel, the five children (Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy), visit Finniston farm, where they discover ancient ruins of a medieval castle. Whilst they solve this mystery, they are helped by two twins called the two Harries (Henry and Harriet), who are known by their ability to speak in unison, and held up by a family of arrogant, rude and rich Americans, Mr Henning and his spoilt son Junior, one of which an angry Grandfather threatens with a sword. |
Fat Chance | Lesléa Newman | 1,994 | Judi Liebowitz wants to be the thinnest girl in eighth grade and have a boyfriend. She's convinced that if only she had "creamy thighs and amazing cheekbones that look like I'm always sipping through a straw" her best friend Monica wouldn't have stolen the boy she had a crush on. When Judi meets glamorous, thin as a stick (tiny as) Nancy Pratt, she thinks her life will turn around and she'll be gorgeous. Nancy teaches Judi the secret she uses to staying thin, binge-purge. Judi is thrilled she can "have her cake and eat it, too and she won't gain weight." But then, something dreadful happens to Nancy Pratt because of her eating disorder and she ends up in intensive care. Judi really doesn't want the same thing to happen to her but she just can't control her disorder and the worst part is, she can't or doesn't want to tell anyone, not even her own mother. This is no easy thing to cure and it's no joke for Nancy or Judi, it's a matter of Life or Death. |
Alina | null | null | Henry Sender discovers that a website he has inherited is an outlet for eastern European webcam operatives, selling themselves live online to customers around the world. As he begins to explore his potentially new career as a webmaster, he "meets" one of his clients, Alina, who rents time on the portal and has a string of disconcerting customers. As an email relationship builds, she suddenly stops communicating and no longer appears online. She had told Henry earlier that she was planning to meet one of her customers in real life. Suffering from a bi-polar disorder and bouts of paranoia, timid Henry hires a bodyguard, Shuff Sheridan, to travel with him to Romania in order to track down Alina. As Sheridan loosens up along the way, he begins to engineer violent episodes as the men travel from Belfast to London, and from Bucharest to Iaşi. Hard drinking Sheridan picks violent fights with random strangers while consistently consoling a panic stricken Henry by telling him that he is his Protector. Meanwhile, Alina meets her customer, Gadaka, in the flesh and he takes her to an apartment he has hired in the city of Iaşi. He explains that he will pay her the large and agreed sum, but that she will have to be his sex slave for eight days. As Alina begins what she hopes will be her final sordid encounter, it appears that Sheridan and Sender simultaenously embark on a night out in the same town during which a Russian mafia enforcer is killed. Back home in Belfast, elderly Francis Cleary is dying while locked inside a steel box. Unable to escape, he thinks back on his times as a maverick philosophy lecturer and how Sheridan was his most eager student. After escaping a brutal confrontation in Iaşi, Sheridan and Sender make it to Alina's home address. They find her hanging, having committed suicide some days before. An unsent file on her computer reveals that she had wanted to send a suicide note to Henry. The message suggests that Alina had been unable to live with the shame after what she had been through. Gadaka had cheated her out of the money he had promised to give her. While searching through her PC, Henry finds that Gadaka is trying to communicate with him. Gadaka outlines what he had done to Alina as he watches Henry seated beside her corpse on Alina's webcam. As their conversation tumbles into depravity, Henry tricks Gadaka out of a fortune in minute-per-minute webcam fees before challenging Sheridan, who has just returned, bloodied, from another bar. As Henry learns news of the now deceased Francis' fate back home, and that Sheridan is wanted for imprisoning the old man in an empty oil tank, he comes close to shooting his bodyguard. Ultimately he allows Sheridan to sleep, instead choosing to carry Alina to an historic nearby cathedral. He leaves her at the feet of St Paraskevi, Protector of Iaşi. Henry leaves Romania soon after, resolute that he has been somewhere close to Hell and that he must begin an escape from his past personality and his recent life. As Sheridan awakes and makes his way back home, he is arrested in London and imprisoned for life for the murder of philosopher Francis Cleary. |
Joshua Son of None | Nancy Freedman | null | Dr. Thor Bitterbaum is in Dallas in November 1963 when the mortally wounded President of the United States (strongly implied to be, but never named as, John F. Kennedy) is brought to the hospital at which he works. Bitterbaum, recalling recent research in cloning, saves some of the President's tissue. He arranges for its cloning and the implantation of an embryo into a surrogate mother, and the adoption of the infant by a wealthy businessman, Gerald K. Kellogg. Bitterbaum and Kellogg arrange for the child, Joshua Francis Kellogg, to have formative experiences similar to those of the late President so that he will develop a similar character and perhaps, in time, rise to leadership of the country. Eventually the clone learns of his origins and, after considerable soul-searching, decides to pursue his destiny. The plot is similar to, but obviously more benign than, Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil, published three years later. |
Hospital Sketches | Louisa May Alcott | null | Tribulaton Periwinkle opens the story by complaining, "I want something to do." She dismisses suggestions to write a book, teach, get married, or start acting. When her younger brother suggests she "go nurse the soldiers", she immediately responds, "I will!" After substantial hardship in trying to obtain a spot, she has further difficulty finding a place on the train. She then describes her travel through New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Immediately after her arrival, Periwinkle must attend to the wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg. Her first assignment is washing them before putting them to bed. She converses with the various wounded soldiers, including an Irishman and a Virginia blacksmith. The blacksmith's death in particular touches her deeply. |
The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | 2,008 | The Hunger Games takes place in a nation known as Panem, established in North America after the destruction of the continent's civilization by an unknown apocalyptic event. The nation consists of the wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts united under the Capitol's control. District 12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region that was formerly known as Appalachia. As punishment for a past rebellion against the Capitol, in which a 13th district was destroyed, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each district are selected by an annual lottery to participate in the Hunger Games, an event in which the participants (or "tributes") must fight to the death in an outdoor arena controlled by the Capitol, until only one individual remains. The story is narrated by 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12 who volunteers for the 74th annual Hunger Games in place of her younger sister, Primrose. The male tribute chosen from District 12 is Peeta Mellark, a former schoolmate of Katniss who once gave her bread from his family's bakery when her family was starving. Katniss and Peeta are taken to the Capitol, where their drunken mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, victor of the 50th Hunger Games, instructs them to watch and determine the strengths and weaknesses of the other tributes. "Stylists" are employed to make each tribute look his or her best; Katniss's stylist, Cinna, is the only person at the Capitol with whom she feels a degree of understanding. The tributes are publicly displayed to the Capitol audience in an interview with television host Caesar Flickerman, and have to attempt to appeal to the television audience in order to obtain "sponsors". During this time, Peeta reveals on-air his longtime unrequited love for Katniss. Katniss believes this to be a ploy to gain sponsors, who can be critical to survival because of their ability to send gifts such as food, medicine, and tools to favored tributes during the Games. While nearly half the tributes are killed in the first day of the Games, Katniss relies on her well-practiced hunting and survival skills to remain unharmed and concealed from the other tributes. A few days into the games, Katniss develops an alliance with Rue, a 12-year-old girl from the agricultural District 11 who reminds Katniss of her own sister. In the meantime, Peeta appears to have joined forces with the tributes from the richer districts. However, when he has the opportunity to kill Katniss, he instead saves her from the others. Katniss's alliance with Rue is brought to an abrupt end when Rue is killed by another tribute, whom Katniss then kills with an arrow. Katniss sings to Rue until she dies, and spreads flowers over her body as a sign of respect for Rue and disgust towards the Capitol. Apparently because of Katniss and Peeta's image in the minds of the audience as "star-crossed lovers", a rule change is announced midway through the Games, allowing two tributes from the same district to win the Hunger Games as a couple. Upon hearing this, Katniss begins searching for Peeta. She eventually finds him, wounded and in hiding. As she nurses him back to health, she acts the part of a young girl falling in love to gain more favor with the audience and, consequently, gifts from her sponsors. When the couple remain as the last two surviving tributes, the Gamemakers reverse the rule change in an attempt to force them into a dramatic finale, where one must kill the other to win. Katniss, knowing that the Gamemakers would rather have two victors than none, retrieves highly poisonous berries known as "nightlock" from her pouch and offers some to Peeta. Realizing that Katniss and Peeta intend to commit suicide, the Gamemakers announce that both will be the victors of the 74th Hunger Games. Although she survives the ordeal in the arena and is treated to a hero's welcome in the Capitol, Katniss is warned by Haymitch that she has now become a political target after defying her society's authoritarian leaders so publicly. Afterwards, Peeta is heartbroken when he learns that Katniss's actions in the arena were part of a calculated ploy to earn sympathy from the audience. However, Katniss is unsure of her own feelings and realizes that she is dreading the moment when she and Peeta will go their separate ways. |
Cavedweller | null | null | Delia Byrd is a native of Cayro, Georgia and a recovering alcoholic who lives in Los Angeles with her surly ten-year-old daughter, Cissy. The former lead singer of the obscure blues-rock band Mud Dog, Delia is supported primarily by Randall Pritchard, Cissy's father and a member of Mud Dog. The novel opens with Randall being killed in a motorcycle accident. Grief-stricken, nearly penniless, and desperate to reconcile with the daughters she left behind in Georgia, Delia packs up her daughter and drives nearly non-stop cross-country. When she arrives in Cayro, she is confronted by townspeople who think she is a "hussy" for having left her two daughters despite being aware of the fact that Delia's husband was often abusive toward her. After a disappointing reunion with the grandfather who raised her, Delia enrolls Cissy at the local school, gets a job as a cleaning woman and sinks into a deep depression. After emerging from the depression, Delia embarks on a quest to regain custody of her now-pubescent daughters, Amanda and Dede, from their hateful and puritanical paternal grandmother. She enlists the aid of the preacher at her mother-in-law's church. Despite the fact that the minister is able to convince the grandmother to consent to visits, Grandma Windsor does not keep her side of the bargain. Desperate, Delia approaches the girls' father, Clint, and makes a deal with him. Clint, who is gravely ill with cancer, agrees to transfer legal custody of the girls to Delia if she moves into his house and cares for him as he is unwilling to spend his last days in a hospital. After thoroughly cleaning the house, Delia moves all three girls in. Things between Delia and her daughters are tense at first. Fourteen-year-old Amanda is as rigid and religion obsessed as her grandmother, frequently telling Cissy that she is going to hell. Dede is a sexually precocious twelve-year-old who likes to smoke cigarettes. They initially ignore their younger sister and her mother. The two older girls also hate their father, remembering the times that he assaulted his parents. Cissy, unable to get along with any of her female relatives, takes pity on the bedridden Clint. She begins reading to him. Eventually, Clint begins to tell her about the early days of his marriage to Delia, expressing remorse about the violence he subjected her to. After Clint dies, Cissy and Dede form a tight bond. However, Amanda remains intractable, frequently arguing with her mother and sisters. Amanda goes on to marry an aspiring preacher and gives birth to two sons in short order. After undergoing a procedure to remove gallstones, Amanda suffers a minor nervous collapse and begins rethinking her previous religiosity. Cissy, who has had problems fitting in at school, develops an abiding friendship with Nolan, a classmate who shares her passion for science fiction novels. Nolan eventually introduces Cissy to spelunking and falls madly in love with Dede, who scorns his advances. Dede, who has several brushes with the law and briefly battles drug addiction, eventually gets a job managing the convenience store. After Nolan rescues Dede from a gun-toting ex-boyfriend, the two embark on a passionate love affair. Cissy begins making plans to return to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. This leaves the forty-something Delia at loose ends as the two older girls have already left home. She has broken up with Cayro's deputy sheriff and has no romantic prospects. Delia then resolves to begin a new chapter of her life by becoming more involved with her young grandsons. |
Swallowing Darkness | Laurell K. Hamilton | 2,008 | Swallowing Darkness follows the further adventures of Princess Meredith "Merry Gentry" NicEssus. Merry has finally succeeded in getting pregnant. Having done so before her cousin Cel could impregnate one of his women, she will be able to claim the Unseelie throne from her aunt Andais as long as she successfully carries her twin babies to term and gives birth. This news makes her a target for many of the fae who are unhappy with the idea of Merry gaining the throne, forcing Merry's royal guard to become more cautious about her security. Meanwhile Merry is still reeling from the sexual attack from her uncle Taranis, King of the Seelie court, as well as with the loss of her lover Frost. To make matters worse, Taranis claims that he was the one who impregnated Merry. |
Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? | Bill Martin, Jr. | 2,006 | A bunch of animals answer the question "What do you see?" and the answers are what animal they see. The text is in rhyme. |
Black Cocktail | Jonathan Carroll | 1,990 | The novel follows the activities of Ingram York, a disc-jockey in Los Angeles. The book deals with the Platonian concept that everyone was originally joined to another human being and spends their lives searching for their missing half. |
Darkhouse | null | null | The novel kicks off in New York City with the abduction of a wealthy couple's young daughter. The girl's mother Elise Gray is being tailed by Detective Joe Lucchesi, his partner Danny Markey and two FBI agents. The kidnapper Donnie Riggs calls Elise and directs her to a park. He lets the girl, Hayley, out of his car and she runs to her mother. Elise discovers that Hayley is strapped with explosives as she embraces her, but she is too late as Riggs presses the detonator, killing them both. Joe pursues the kidnapper and guns him down. Two days later, in a Nevada prison, inmate Duke Rawlins is distraught to learn of the death of Donnie, his childhood friend. One year passes and Joe Lucchesi has relocated to Ireland with his interior designer wife Anna and sixteen-year-old son Shaun. Joe has taken temporary retirement from the force, Anna is renovating an old lighthouse and Shaun is dating a local girl called Katie Lawson. At first it seems that their family life is idyllic but Anna has a dark secret. She had a secret affair with local drunk John Miller, a man now embittered at his wife having moved to Australia with his children. Joe's turbulent relationship with his father, Giulio, is highlighted as he travels over to the States to attend his second marriage. Giulio clashes with Joe over his career choice and moving his family to Ireland. To make matters worse, Katie disappears from the area leaving Shaun deeply upset. Meanwhile, in a parallel subplot, Duke Rawlins has been travelling around Ireland and has reached Mountbatton. An investigation is launched in Mountbatton into Katie's mysterious disappearance. Her devastated mother Martha insists that her daughter was a happy-go-lucky teenager with many friends and a caring boyfriend; she had no reason to go missing. Shaun comes under suspicion as he was the last person to see her; Joe himself cannot help but think that his son is hiding something and even looks for some sort of clues in his bedroom. Shaun becomes indignant at his father taking on the role of investigator and suspecting him of withholding information. Joe finds himself seeing red herrings everywhere in the community. He questions Shaun's friend Robert Harrington about a scratch on his hand, much to Shaun's annoyance. He also sees John Miller as a possible suspect. Anna in the meantime has to deal with Joe asking her awkward questions about her involvement with Miller. The locals conduct a search of the surrounding area to no avail. Local Sergeant Frank Deegan, hotshot D.I. Myles O' Connor and fiery garda Richie Bates question Mae Miller, the elderly mother of John Miller and mentally challenged school caretaker Petey Grant amongst others but come no closer to the truth. Joe does his own investigating, retracing routes that Katie may have taken and asks questions, however, his theories are dismissed by Richie who tells him to stay out of the case. After a number of weeks, Katie's decomposing body is discovered in the forest near Shore's Rock, the lighthouse where the Lucchesis live. The post mortem results reveal that Katie had been strangled and beaten with a blunt instrument. With the community baffled by the brutal murder of such a popular teenager, the Lucchesi family begin to fall apart. Shaun is inconsolable over his girlfriend's death and Anna becomes increasingly paranoid about what Joe knows. She confesses to him that she had been seeing John Miller while they were engaged which makes Joe furious. Meanwhile, the authorities are told to pay particular attention to Shaun and also to Joe who had been seen removing evidence from the murder scene. The night after Katie's funeral, one of the locals has an altercation with Duke Rawlins outside the bar and finds a hawk gold pin after Duke flees. He shows it to a shocked Joe who recognises it as being the same pin that Donnie Riggs had in his hand when he shot him. Flashbacks to Donnie and Duke's childhood in Texas run concurrent to the main murder plot. They both grow up in Stinger's Creek and are inseparable. Duke is very close to his kindly Uncle Bill but has to deal with a lot of hardship in his life in the form of a drug addicted, promiscuous mother and the unwanted attentions of a paedophile. Donnie also has domestic strife as his father is a negligent alcoholic, while Duke's negative surroundings are moulding him into a deeply disturbed boy with a penchant for violence. At the age of fifteen the two boys make a chilling blood pact to remain loyal to one another until the end, a precursor to their later dastardly actions. With Joe now convinced that Duke Rawlins is after him with revenge on his mind, he once again clashes with Richie Bates when he takes Petey Grant in for questioning over the murder. However, Petey reveals that he met Katie on the night of her death and that she had had a fight with Shaun, something which Shaun had earlier disputed. When he is interrogated by Richie and Frank Deegan he admits that a failed attempt at sexual intercourse had caused Katie to become upset and run away from him. Frank is shocked to discover, in the meantime, that his phone number was the last that Katie had dialed on the fateful night. While researching Duke Rawlins, Joe discovers that Ogden Parnum, a former Police Chief from Stinger's Creek has committed suicide. Joe is intrigued to find that he was head of the unsolved Crosscut Killer investigation, an infamous serial killer who raped and murdered nine young women in Texas. Across the Atlantic, Danny Markey questions the cellmate of Duke Rawlins, who reveals that Donnie was getting the ransom money for Duke upon his release from jail. Back in Mountbatton, Joe is now convinced that Duke and Donnie are connected to the Crosscut Killer mystery and is liaising with American Detective Victor Nicotero on the theory. Anna is horrified as she discovers that Joe is planning on being reinstated with the force, while Joe clashes with his father again as he has bought Shaun a ticket to New York to stay with him. Anna is subsequently kidnapped by Duke when he poses as a replacement gardener for a photoshoot she is doing. Joe saves a desperate Shaun from a drunken suicide attempt, only to then discover that Anna is missing... Additional flashback sequences to Texas, show how Duke and Donnie embarked upon their sadistic rampage of rape and murder as they callously slayed a succession of innocent young women, proving that they were behind the Crosscut killings. State pathologist Lara McClatchie contacts Frank Deegan telling him that were no similarities in the deaths of the Crosscut victims to Katie's murder but the recent murder of a young Limerick woman bear the same hallmarks. Frank now realises that Joe's theory about Duke Rawlins being in Ireland is true. Still in under the belief that Anna has walked out on him and Shaun, Joe receives a call from Duke who is holding Anna in a remote cottage. He threatens to kill her unless Joe complies with his wishes. He discovers that Duke has a missing Tipperary woman, Siobhan Fallon, in his clutches too. As Duke taunts him on the phone about Anna, Joe turns the tables on the kidnapper by telling Duke about how his wife, Sammi, has been unfaithful to him. He informs Duke that she had been having an affair with Donnie while he was in prison and that she has gone to the police in Stinger's Creek confessing that her husband is the Crosscut Killer. The ransom money hadn't been for Duke, it was for Donnie and Sammi to have a fresh start with. While Joe is on the phone to Duke, Shaun overhears and is furious that Joe won't go to the Gardaí. Meanwhile, in Texas, Victor Nicotero visits Ogden Parnum's widow on the pretense of investigating her husband's suicide. She tells Victor that Marcy Winbaum, a DA, who worked with Ogden some years previously came to visit him shortly before his death. Parnum's widow was suspicious over a heated conversation that Marcy had with her husband. It is revealed in a flashback to 1992, that Marcy had uncovered evidence linking Duke Rawlins to the Crosscut murders. Ogden questions Duke, who blackmails his interrogator as he was the paedophile who abused him as a child. Ogden provided Duke with an alibi, which allowed him to get away with his heinous crimes. Duke brutally murders Siobhan in front of captive Anna who then tries to escape. Joe discovers Siobhan's body before finding a badly wounded Anna, who Duke had fired an arrow at. Duke then grabs Shaun and holds him over the edge of the lighthouse balcony in a precarious stand-off with Joe. With both Shaun and Anna's lives in jeopardy, Joe is issued with an ultimatum, call 999 for medical assistance for Anna or Shaun plummets to his death. Joe chooses to save Shaun and Duke escapes as an ambulance arrives at the lighthouse for Anna. Richie and Joe pursue Duke but lose him. In a fresh twist, a drug dealer reveals that Richie had murdered Katie as she had witnessed him tipping off the criminal. Richie is arrested for Katie's murder while Duke escapes the country. In the novel's epilogue, Joe and Shaun are back in New York with Giulio with a traumatised Anna recuperating in her native Paris. It seems that the Lucchesis' marriage has broken down until Shaun receives a call from Anna saying that she is coming home to them. |
Flute's Journey: The Life of a Wood Thrush | null | null | The book tells the first year of a wood thrush's life starting from it hatching in a forest that is in Maryland. Two children see the bird when it is young and calls it Flute. The children wait for Flute to return from migration and watch him and his mate build a nest and raise their young. In Flute's travels, he encounters many dangers. The eggs and nestlings are at more of a risk. |
Through Black Spruce | Joseph Boyden | 2,008 | Through Black Spruce is set in Moosonee, Ontario and is narrated by Will Bird and his niece Annie Bird with the narration switching between chapters. Will, a former bush pilot, is in a coma. Over the course of the novel Will recounts the events of the previous year which led to him being in a coma to his nieces, Annie and Suzanne. Meanwhile, in the present day, Annie recounts the previous year of her life and her sojourns to Toronto, Montreal and New York City to a comatose Will in an attempt to help to revive him from his coma. |
A House is Built | M. Barnard Eldershaw | 1,929 | The novel centres around James Hyde and his family. A former Royal Navy quartermaster, in 1837 Hyde sets up a business in early Sydney. He brings his family to Australia and would have his sons and grandsons continue his business. They are either disinclined to take up the business or more interested in the Australian gold-fields. His daughter Fanny has all the qualities needed to continue the family business. Constricted by gender stereotypes, Hyde, his business, and his family fall into tragedy. |
Return of the Brute | Liam O'Flaherty | 1,929 | Based on the author's experience as an Irish Guardsman in World War I, this short novel tells the story of a squad of British soldiers in an unidentified area of the Western Front. The squad is led by Corporal Williams, an obtuse NCO, and consists of nine infantrymen, one of whom, William Gunn, is plagued by PTS and mentally unbalanced. The novel focuses on the last hours of this group of doomed individuals, which will be killed or wounded in a fruitless attempt to occupy a section of the enemy front line. Gunn will go crazy, turning into the Brute of the title, and will kill the other two surviving soldiers in the bleak ending of the novel. |
The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher | Molly Bang | 1,980 | A grey lady buys strawberries from the market and heads home to her family with them. A long fingered blue creature follows her and tries to steal the strawberries, but she escapes through various means--catching a bus, swinging from a vine, and simply by blending into the grey swamp but for her face and hands. When he gets frustrated, he finds blackberries and eats them instead. |
The Amityville Horror Part II | null | 1,982 | The Lutz family barely escapes 112 Ocean Ave. While fleeing Amityville, they are attacked, but got away. They arrive at Kathy's mother's house, where they think they are safe. Soon after, George is awoken by a supernatural force. George and Kathy realize that they are being followed. Over the next few days, Kathy and her mother spot Missy playing with Jodie. Events plague the family. They get The Amityville Horror published and have to deal not only with the supernatural, but skeptics and a never ending line of press. |
Krondor: The Betrayal | Raymond E. Feist | 1,998 | A moredhel known as Gorath has brought news of deadly forces stirring on the horizon. The Nighthawks have begun murdering again, and a group of six magicians known as The Six are at the root of it all. Tsurani gem smugglers led by The Crawler and traitors to the crown are all plotting the fall of the Kingdom of the Isles.Squires James and Locklear must fend off the reunited moredhel while Gorath and his newly gained friend Owyn seek to aid the magician Pug and the kingdom. |
Stover at Yale | Owen Johnson | 1,912 | The story opens with a picture of Stover seating himself on a train bound for New Haven. We get a very short recap of Stover's background from his Lawrenceville days (recounted in The Varmint) where Stover overcame a poor start to distinguish himself on the gridiron and became a class leader. While Stover is poised in dress and bearing (Johnson a bit pokes fun at Stover's self-awareness of that), around him his classmates are more eager and juvenile. Stover listens to them talk around him and learns of the secret society system, which will be the main drama of the plot. Later, the tap ceremony for the Yale senior society Skull and Bones is vividly described. While on the train, Stover also meets Tom Regan, an older, physically imposing and more open classmate of his, as well as LeBaron, a leading sophomore who is already taking Stover under his wing. Arriving at his campus lodgings, Stover meets several more characters who will play parts in the following chapters. With Tough McCarty, his rival became friend from Lawrenceville days, Stover has a joyous roughhouse. He also meets McNabb, who is the "partier" of the freshman class. With Hunter, who is reserved and poised for leadership, Stover instantly feels rivalry. A sophomore, Reynolds, "an undersized nervous fellow" but first in his class to "make the News", stops by to check on the Andover freshmen in the house. He evaluates each man and advises him on what to go after in terms of extracurriculars. Some comic relief is afforded when Rogers, a junior stops by, and the tone changes to Reynolds deferring while Rogers leads the group in antagonizing a group of sophomores by turning lights on and off. The chapter concludes with Stover's dinner with LeBaron. LeBaron counsels Stover on the importance of winning election to a secret society. Stover is troubled by the seriousness of this social positioning. Back with Tough, Stover then tells Tough to "go slow" about making new friendships, nixing Tough's plan for a dining group to put the two of them with a more select bunch, but has a hard time explaining his motivation. The action then shifts to the gridiron. Stover performs well at basic drills, but gets no praise and is not called on to scrimmage. Tompkins, one of the coaches, cautions him, “Stover, just one word for your good. You come up with a big prep school reputation. Don't make an ass of yourself." Later, Stover meets Gimbal, who openly proclaims a plan to fight the society system. Gimbal is also open about looking for political leadership with his anti-society stance. The two shake hands, but Stover is uncertain what to make of Gimbal. In the evening, Stover and his class take part in wrestling contests against the sophomores. When no one from his class will stand in as the middleweight, Stover volunteers, though he knows no wrestling. Stover uses his football tackling power to beat his opponent, despite the other man's better knowledge of wrestling. Dana, the football captain, and Tompkins, the coach, see Stover's incredible tackling power and recognize him for it, enthusiastically and sparingly. Stover is borne home by his classmates, having established himself as a name in the class. Stover reconnects with Regan, who had avoided the wrestling match and the first week of practice, despite his huge size, preferring to concentrate on personal affairs and school. Stover also meets other members of the class: Bob Story, son of an influential judge, as well as Joe Hungerford, a "name known across the world for power in finance." Stover, with Hungerford's encouragement, persuades Regan to become the waiter for their dining club. In football practice, Stover at first is disappointed that his wrestling heroics do not suddenly win him a place on the team, but eventually he gets placed as the end on the scrub team. He battles a senior, Bangs, who is the starting end, and outplays him dramatically. Bangs resents Stover's presence as threatening a position that he spent three years building toward. |
Book of the Black Bass | James A. Henshall | 1,881 | Henshall's Book of Black Bass is really three books in one. There are nearly 180 pages devoted to the biology of the Black Basses known at the time. A slightly lesser number of pages in Part Second are focused on the fishing tackle necessary for successful Black Bass fishing. Henshall himself was a leading reel collector when his book was published and his chapters on fishing reels and their development are often quoted and valued by tackle collectors today. The Part Third as Henshall named it is focused on the various fishing techniques to be used in Black Bass fishing to include fly fishing. Henshall published a companion book entitled More About the Black Bass is 1889 and in 1904 published Book of the Black Bass in a revised 2nd edition that included much of the writings in More About the Black Bass. In the 1881 Preface, Henshall introduces the book thus: This book owes its origin to a long-cherished desire on the part of the author, to give to the Black Bass its proper place among game fishes, and to create among anglers, and the public generally, an interest in a fish that has never been so fully appreciated as its merits deserve, because of the want of suitable tackle for its capture, on the one hand, and a lack of information regarding its habits and economic value on the other. The Book of the Black Bass is of an entirely practical nature, both as regards its subject-matter and its illustrations. It has been written more with a view to instruct, than to amuse or entertain the reader; he will, therefore, look in vain, between its covers, for those rhetorical flights, poetic descriptions or entertaining accounts and pleasing illustrations of the pleasures and vicissitudes of angling, which are usually found in works of this character. Nor is it to be regarded, on the other hand, as a book of a purely scientific nature—far from it—for the author has written as an angler rather than as a naturalist. With these apologies, I trust the reader will not be disappointed in its perusal. |
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